UNIVIW1TY OF 1LUNOIS LIBRARY
AT URBANA-CHAMPAlgN
ILLINOIS HISTORICAL SURVEY
MEMORIES OF A FRIEND
MEMORIES OF
A FRIEND
BY
AMELIA GERE MASON
CHICAGO
LAURENCE C. WOODWORTH
1918
COPYRIGHT 1918
BY
AMELIA GERE MASON
. 7209773
CONTENTS
Preface ...... vii
Introduction ..... ix
Memories of a Friend .... 3
ILLUSTRATIONS
PORTRAITS
Emily Eames MacVeagh . . Frontispiece
Emily Eames, at the age of four . Facing page 9
Emily Eames MacVeagh . . 25
from a photograph^ 1909
Edith MacVeagh, at the age of five . 49
Eames MacVeagh, at the age of twelve 65
Amelia Gere Mason . . 89
Franklin MacVeagh " 113
[v]
00
ILLUSTRATIONS Continued
Eames MacVeagh . . . Facing page 129
Emily Eames MacVeagh . . " 165
from a photograph, 1 91 1
RESIDENCES
The Chicago Residence . . ' Facing page 73
The Washington Residence . " 145
Knollwood, Dublin, New Hampshire . 161
Note The illustration of the Washington residence (facing page
145) was drawn by Hugh Ferriss for The Christian Science Monitor,
from a photograph copyrighted by Underwood & Underwood. It is
here reproduced with the courteous permission of all concerned.
[vi]
PREFACE
These "Memories" were begun many years ago as a
personal record of a life -long friendship. There was
never a thought of publication, which indeed the intimacy
of the simple details seemed to forbid. Additions were
made from time to time, and what was begun as a
sketch of early days now presents in outline many of
the salient points of a life. The manuscript was always
left among other special papers, subject to any changes
the years might bring, and addressed to Emily Eames
MacVeagh.
Eutfate has a capricious way of reversing the natural
order of things. Today she is gone, and it has passed
into the hands of those most concerned, who have thought
it desirable to put the rambling pages into a permanent
form ; while I am still here to add a last line to the best
tribute I can offer to a cherished friend. It is a faithful,
spontaneous, and entirely unsought transcript of things
as they passed. The facts, noted down at the moment in
my diary, and a few letters tell their own story. If these
serve in any measure to recall the gracious and attaching
personality of one who lived a full life and went out of
it bravely, the simple record, without plan as it is, will
have fulfilled its purpose.
A. G. M.
Chicago, 1918
Vll
INTRODUCTION
A great deal of the pleasure of living lies
in having lived. It is the memories of those
who came to us when the world was fresh
and new, that people our solitude and give
us a sense of the continuity of life. A few
figures stand out in the past as linked some-
how with its intimate joys and sorrows, and
these become doubly alive as the years go
on. We like to call them from the shadows
and live over again the scenes that come
with them. We project little pictures of
them in our imagination. Perhaps we while
away the silent or lonely hours by putting
these memories into visible form. This is
what I am doing now. The picture may be
dim and imperfect, but it is a true record of
one I knew and loved in childhood. We
have often gone separate ways, but the
early affection outlasted time and change.
[ix
MEMORIES OF A FRIEND
MEMORIES OF A FRIEND
I
WHEN I first saw Emily Eames she was a child
of eight years. I was older, but still at an age
when impressions are vivid and lasting. It was the
beginning of a life-long friendship and I have always
retained a clear picture of her as she was at that
time. She had a singularly winning personality. No
one who knew her then could forget her fascinating
ways, her enthusiasm, her energy, her facility, and
her boundless affection. Her face was mobile and
expressive, her hair of a bright auburn, and her blue
eyes fairly danced with love and joy. She was ap-
parently quite unconscious of herself and seemed to
care little then for dress or personal adornment. Per-
haps she was still too young to think of these things,
which grow so naturally out of a taste for the beau-
tiful and a wish to please. Her love for her friends
was uppermost and for these she had a veritable
adoration which showed itself in everything she did.
I recall one instance of her devotion, when she in-
sisted upon leaving the family pew at church to sit
where she could have a full and constant view of her
[3]
idol of the moment, who in this case was destined to
play a more or less permanent part in her life.
During these early years I never saw in her a
trace of the selfishness or ill temper that so often
mars the attractions of a much petted child. She
was wilful and determined when she set her heart
on anything, but she usually won her way by per-
suasion and a thousand little graces of fascination,
rather than by direct insistence. If other devices
failed, however, she did not hesitate to insist, or
resort to various diplomacies to gain her end.
The same intensity of affection that made her
love for her friends a species of worship, also made
her passionately resentful of any wrong done them.
She did not readily forget an injustice to those she
loved, though she was never revengeful. I have
often heard her say that she could not cherish a
resentment long enough to be dignified.
She was born in Utica, New York, but in her in-
fancy her family removed to Ottawa, Illinois, where
her childhood and early youth were passed. It was
a flourishing town, with an exceptionally interesting
social life. Many of its leading citizens came to
have a national reputation. Among these were Judge
T. Lyle Dickey, an eminent lawyer and wit who be-
came Assistant Attorney General during Grant's
administration, and later, Chief Justice of the Su-
preme Court of Illinois; Burton Cook, a Congress-
man and a man of fine intellectual tastes; General
[4]
W. H. L. Wallace, an eminent lawyer, who distin-
guished himself before losing his life in the Civil War;
and Judge Caton, who held many important posi-
tions both civil and judicial, accumulated a large
fortune, and died at an advanced age in Chicago,
where he lived for many years. Mrs. Caton, who
was Emily's aunt, was a stately, gracious lady, noted
for her hospitality and the elegance of her entertain-
ments, as well as for her large and generous char-
acter. There were many others who have left hon-
ored names among those who shaped the destinies
of the State before money sat upon the throne and
furnished motives and standards in every department
of life.
Among the various social elements in Ottawa
there was a small colony of English people of the
better class, who left the conventional life which
they had not the means to support at home, and
buried themselves for long periods in the compara-
tive seclusion of a new country. From time to time
they returned to England for more or less extended
visits, and brought back the fresh flavor of a mode
of living which was less common here then than it is
today. There was something in this exotic atmos-
phere of established forms, social amenities, and
agreeable manners, that appealed strongly to the
little Emily. She was by nature aesthetic. She
loved the beautiful in all its phases, not only of form
and color, but the subtler essence of it as shown in
[5]
graces of speech and manner, in harmony of living,
in the thousand fine details of even a simple life,
saturated with old-world traditions. The very tra-
ditions charmed her. She was a pet and a favorite
in these pleasant homes, and was never weary of
listening to tales of an order of things which sug-
gested a sort of fairy-land to her childish imagina-
tion. Inspired by these romantic tales and dazzled
by the mysterious splendor of their setting, this girl
of seven or eight years ransacked trunks of old finery
and delighted to array herself in the silks, brocades,
laces, and jewels of bygone days, and play impro-
vised dramas in which knights and court ladies had
a conspicuous place, with hoary castles, and stately
halls, and beautiful parks, as imaginary backgrounds.
This love of the ceremonies and accessories of an old
civilization never left her, and it colored all the tastes
and aspirations of her mature years. She was never
content with material luxury, which she always had,
according to the measure of the time, but it was her
life-long aim to crown the force, the energy, and the
often crude ambitions of modern life, with the grace
and charm of a calmer and more settled existence.
As she grew older, her interests enlarged rapidly.
She learned readily and was eager to excel in every
thing she did. She began early to show a keen appre-
ciation of books and of people who represented cul-
ture in any form. Her aptness for seizing upon what-
ever was uppermost in the aesthetic current of the
[6]
time was remarkable, even in her youth. I recall
meeting her at a dance one evening while visiting my
Ottawa friends after a long absence. She had grown
into a graceful girl of fifteen, full of the old life and
enthusiasm, loving the gay amusements of her age,
but looking at the world also from another and more
serious side. Music was not her dominant passion,
though it appealed strongly to her emotional tem-
perament, so I was the more surprised when she
turned to me at some pause in the quadrille, and
asked a discriminating question about Madame La-
grange, who was then at the height of her fame, and
singing in New York. It was not so much the com-
ment she made that struck me, but the fact that a
schoolgirl should think of commenting at all, at such
a moment, on the genius and career of a woman a
thousand miles away whom she had never seen, and
whose life was apparently so far removed from her
own interests. It was no doubt partly due to her tact
in divining what would be likely to please one much
devoted to music, but behind it was the intelligence
that even then caught the salient points in the best
culture of the time. Though so far from the centres
of civilization at a period when they seemed much
more remote than they do now, she kept herself au
courant with what was going on there.
A little later she came directly under the influ-
ence of Mrs. Henshaw, the wife of a retired naval
officer, a woman of strong intellect, large character,
and great personal distinction, with all the charm of
social culture and the refinement of a New England
gentlewoman. Her exalted ideals and fine enthusi-
asms were an inspiration to the impressionable young
girl and held her attention to more or less serious
things. She directed her reading into the best chan-
nels and gave her a taste for the solid forms of litera-
ture. Taking into account the material with which
she had to deal, she marked out a course of training
that led to definite ends, and left a strong impress on
the facile character which had for her, as for others,
so attaching a quality.
It was Mrs. Henshaw who suggested for her Miss
Dutton's school at New Haven, which at that time
offered unusual facilities in many directions for a
young girl's education. She had lived in New Haven
herself, was partly educated there, and had a per-
sonal knowledge of these advantages, as well as of
the atmosphere into which her little friend would be
thrown. It was before the days of colleges and uni-
versity degrees for women, but there were ample op-
portunities there for gathering the knowledge of his-
tory, art, and literature, which held the first place in
Emily's interest. Art was then largely studied in
books, and I have often heard her speak of the delight
she had in a teacher who was not only an ardent
disciple, but a friend of Ruskin's, and read to her
pupils his occasional letters. Such facilities for seeing
pictures as came to her through an acquaintance with
[8]
a few distinguished artists, and frequent visits to
New York, were eagerly embraced. But the glimpses
she had of an intellectual social life were not among
the least of the influences which told on her future.
The atmosphere that surrounded the Woolseys, the
Sillimans, and other leaders in the best life of New
Haven, was in itself an inspiration. She met, too,
many of the college men who have since played a
conspicuous part in the world of affairs.
Among these were William C. Whitney, later sec-
retary of the navy, political leader, and noted finan-
cier; Professor William G. Sumner, well-known as
professor of political economy at Yale, an Independ-
ent in politics, and a strong advocate of free trade;
Daniel H. Chamberlain, who won reputation as a
reconstructionist after the war, and became a popu-
lar governor of South Carolina; United States Senator
Higgins of Delaware; Eugene Schuyler, traveler, lit-
terateur^ and diplomat, who had a brilliant career as
minister to Greece, charge d'affaires at St. Petersburg,
and translator of some of the masterpieces of Russian
fiction finishing his half-completed life on foreign
soil with its best possibilities yet before him; and
Joseph Cook, clergyman and distinguished orator,
who went out of life, too, before he had passed his
prime. But most important to her of all this bril-
liant coterie was Franklin MacVeagh, to whom she
was afterward married and whose friends were her
friends.
[9]
On leaving New Haven after three years of study,
she spent two years in New York at a French school,
where she devoted herself to the languages, music,
art, and belles-lettres. Here she received the finishing
touches to her schooling. This is speaking after the
manner of the world, for in reality she never did con-
sider her education finished, as she was more or less a
student, in some direction, all her life, notably on
aesthetic lines. She was specially favored in the ac-
quaintance of well-known artists, who made her fam-
iliar with all that was best worth seeing at that time;
also in her social advantages. Many life-long friend-
ships were formed. Then, as always, the social side
of things was uppermost. She loved people, and she
had a happy facility in gathering from them what
best fitted into her own scheme of life.
The close of her school days left her with many
new ideals of living and new standards. These she
brought back to her Western home. In the absence
of other active interests on which to spend her rest-
less energies, she plunged into books as a refuge for
her idle hours. She chose history, biography, and
books of travel, in preference to the almost universal
fiction, partly perhaps to add to her available knowl-
edge, and partly through a quality of mind that
found more pleasure in solid than in purely imagina-
tive literature. With a practical vein inherited from
her father, she instinctively sought what she could
make use of, or what would add strength and value
[10]
to her personality. Her generous enthusiasm and her
love of social life came from her mother, whose gra-
cious and abundant hospitality made her a command-
ing figure in her early days.
II
IT WAS about the time of Emily's return from New
York that her family removed to Chicago, which
became her permanent home. This was in the spring
of 1865. It was just at the close of the Civil War,
when stirring events followed each other in quick
succession. The echo of rejoicing had hardly died
away when the country was stunned by the assassina-
tion of its much-loved President. All business was
suspended. The city was draped in black. People
wandered about, tearful and silent, wondering what
was coming next. The scenes of the following days
are never to be forgotten. The remains lay in state
here for several hours en route to their last resting
place, and I have a vivid remembrance of being
called at midnight to go and see them. The hall
hung in black, the profusion of white flowers, the
solemn dirges, the weeping crowd all served to
deepen the tragic impression that was indelible.
But the world goes on whoever may drop out of
it. Mourning and festivities are never far apart. On
the morrow of the great tragedy of the century,
people were thronging to the new Crosby Opera House,
the opening of which had been deferred until after
the funeral. The sombre pall still hung over the city
[12]
and every heart was still heavy with grief, but visibly
it was a gala night. The house was fresh and beauti-
ful in its white and gold with relief of blue, the audi-
ence was a brilliant one, and the opera was // Trova-
tore. Clara Louise Kellogg, the leading soprano, was
at the height of her fame and never sang better. She
was a trifle cold perhaps, but graceful and full of
charm, with a voice of great clearness and purity.
For the next two or three weeks everybody was dis-
cussing the merits of the singers. Annie Louise Gary
won all hearts with her sympathetic contralto notes
and her magnetic personality. Then there was the
silver- voiced Brignoli; Zucchi, commanding in trag-
edy, intense and powerful; Mazzolini, and numerous
others stars in their time, but all gone into obscur-
ity or out of the world today.
Shortly after the close of the most brilliant opera
season ever known to Chicago at that time, came the
great Sanitary Fair to broaden its interests in many
directions. Not least in importance among its ex-
hibits was a fine collection of American pictures,
including the best works of Church, Bierstadt, Leutze,
Beard, Hart, Inness, Weber, and others less known.
It was the beginning of a new era in the history of
the city. The interest in things literary and artistic
was extending to groups of men and women who were
trying to establish a more solid foundation for the
growth of finer tastes. Everything was crude yet,
but hope abounded, and energy, and aspiration.
[131
It was in the midst of this stirring of new aims
and impulses that had not yet found permanent form
or expression, that Emily came to Chicago and we
took up again the threads of an old affection which
quickly ripened into a lasting intimacy. I had to
some extent lost trace of her interests and tastes for
several years and was pleased to find that time had
only added to her enthusiasm for everything that led
in the direction of a broader culture. I have a vivid
remembrance of meeting her one afternoon soon after
she came, and drifting into a long discussion of the
various writers and artists of the time. Her famili-
arity with them was unusual among the young ladies
of that day, and I was especially struck with the
soundness of her judgment and the seriousness of her
tastes. Without being profoundly critical, she was
appreciative, and quite in touch with the literary and
artistic spirit of the moment. Then, as always, she
was keenly interested in the visible forms of beauty.
She was fresh, too, from the personal influence of the
group of artists who, under the leadership of Clar-
ence Cooke, Eugene Schuyler, and Russell Sturgis,
were discussing modern art and its aim in the pages
of The New Path. This we hailed as a prelude to the
coming day, entering into all the Pre-Raphaelite en-
thusiasms of its young contributors, who were the
early disciples of Rossetti, Millais, and Holman Hunt.
There was little taste for art in this country at that
time, especially in the West, where every one was
absorbed in the race for money and the utilitarian
side of life was uppermost. But we had dim visions
of unknown regions where people knelt at the shrine
of beauty, and we reveled in dreams of what our
own civilization was one day to become, with its
unlimited resources and its expanding ideals.
Our rambling talks led to an indefatigable search
for everything that could throw a ray of light on
what was going on in the world of art and intellect.
Together we haunted the picture exhibitions, what-
ever their size or importance might be. We stood
spellbound before the brilliant work of Church and
Bierstadt, the sombre imagination of Inness, the
delicacy and refinement of Kensett, the freshness of
Bradford, the thoughtful seriousness of Vedder and La-
farge. Perhaps we were not very discriminating. We
devoured every number of The New Path^ accepted
its judgments, and fancied we endorsed its theories.
I strongly suspect that a certain glamour which hung
about the English Pre-Raphaelites, and the brilliant
gifts and youthful earnestness of their American
followers, had much to do with our rather undefined
faith. We talked of realism, but really loved ideal-
ism. The stage of objective criticism we had not
reached, and we had no illustrations of the new
theories on which to base our impressions. As a mat-
ter of fact, the hard literalism and absolute fidelity
to detail of this short-lived school would not have
appealed to us, though we have since recognized the
[15]
immense value of its influence on later art. But
what we lacked in knowledge we made up in enthu-
siasm. We felt the sincerity of much that we saw,
and knew that it was beautiful.
If we had not an art-atmosphere or too many
pictures, and were utterly without familiar traditions
which count for so much, we had at least books that
gave us glimpses into unknown worlds of beauty. We
raved over Ruskin, saw the wonderful work of Turner
through his eyes or fancied we did and found a
royal banquet in the glowing pages of The Modern
Painters. We read The Seven Lamps of Architecture ,
studied our own crude buildings by the rather ab-
stract light of it, and found them wanting. I even
tried to write an article on the beauties of the new
Opera House, which represented the finest architec-
tural taste of the city at that moment, and a friend
sent me this book as an inspiration. I did not find
it illuminating on that special subject, though it was
inspiring in a larger way. No doubt the paper was
sufficiently vague as to architecture, but it appeared
in a Boston musical journal which was an authority
at the time. Of history there was no end. We
searched the pages of Kugler, and Liibke, and Vasari,
for light on the artistic past, talked wisely of schools,
and interested ourselves in every detail of the lives
of the masters from the dawn of art to the latest
romantic experiences of Millais and Rossetti.
Many of our idols are rudely tossed aside by the
[16]
student of today. New gods have been put on ped-
estals, to be put off again in turn. I recall standing
one day before Harriet Hosmer's Zenobia, noting the
proud face, the nerved hand, the reluctant step, and
imagining the real woman with her power and her
tragedy behind the drapery of marble. We are told
now that the real woman was never there. Perhaps
we had a dim consciousness at the moment that she
was not so much alive as we tried to believe her, for
I find in my note book a record of disappointment
which was traced to the impossibility of putting the
depth and intensity of life into colorless stone. Did
we read into it the dreams of our own imaginations?
If we did they were rosy dreams with inspiration in
them. I wonder if the old worship of ideals any
longer exists! Does the sun ever really shine for
those who devote themselves to finding its spots?
So far as Emily was concerned, all this was a prel-
ude to the passion for artistic decoration and for
surrounding herself with rare and beautiful things,
which so strongly colored her life in after years, and
led her always to take an active interest in those who
were struggling towards a realization of beauty in a
depressing air. No genuine talent ever appealed to
her in vain. But she wished for results, and was
never satisfied until she saw the fruit of any gift,
however small. She had, to an eminent degree, the
art of adapting means to special ends, and was not
content with purely spiritual or intellectual values.
She must see them reduced to the concrete and vis-
ible. If her extreme optimism often led her to over-
rate these results, her sympathy and encouragement
were none the less inspiring. At twenty-two one has
enthusiasms. Emily never lost them.
I often heard her say that she would like to take
up some historic or artistic subject and give private
talks to selected classes, if her life were not already
planned on other lines. A kindly fate had placed her
beyond the need of doing anything for the money it
might bring, but she looked upon this as a possible
outlet for her superabundant energies and a pleasant
way of utilizing whatever knowledge she had. It was
before the days when women began to flock to the
lecture platform, and few were attracted to a mission
of that sort, even if it were no more than a quiet
parlor talk. Culture had not become a fad and in-
struction a mania. But Delia Bacon had been much
considered in New Haven for her Shakespearean
classes until her Baconian theories attacked a popu-
lar idol and arrayed her friends against each other.
It was her career, brilliant, though tragic at its close,
that set a fashion which appealed strongly to Emily's
imagination. She thought it opened an agreeable
field for women and constantly urged me to enter it.
I have a vivid remembrance of seeing her walk into
my room one summer evening with her arms full of
books, and a servant following with another huge
pile. I was just starting for a season in the country
[1*1
and these were intended for my recreation. Among
the volumes which I was expected to take in my
trunk for holiday reading or re-reading, were Gibbon,
Macaulay, Hallam, Arnold, Buckle, and some large
history of art, Kugler I think, with a few of Vasari's
Lives of the Artists. Libraries were not numerous
then, and books were expensive, so this was a wel-
come offering, but it was rather solid fare to be pro-
posed by a young lady to a semi-invalid friend seek-
ing rest and health among the trees. No doubt she
was consulting my tastes, but this formidable array
of books appealed to her as a vast storehouse of
knowledge from which I was to gather material for
a series of drawing-room talks. I suggested that I
should come back a veritable blue-stocking, as well
as a wreck, and asked if I might not have a volume
of Tennyson and a novel or two, just to relieve the
tension of so much learning when I was ordered to
be frivolous and vegetate. But she was not sure that
it was best to waste time on poetry or novels, which
would contribute nothing to the end in view and
really led nowhere. On this point we were hopelessly,
though amiably, at variance, in spite of my own New
England birth and training which did not foster the
imagination. I was glad, however, to take the books,
though, alas, they came back from that special out-
ing mostly unread. Fate, in the guise of a severe
illness, was too much for me.
This little incident is a good illustration of her
[19]
devotion to the interest of her friends. She was al-
ways ready to use her energies in their behalf, and
continually spurring them on to make the most of
any gifts they might have. She valued, too, work of
a solid quality. I was speaking to her one day of a
woman of much culture who posed a little, but was
genuine in comparison with many who do the same
thing today.
"Oh yes," said Emily, "I know her; but don't you
think she handles serious subjects with kid gloves?
Isn't she a sort of dilettante who just skims the sur-
face of things?"
"Perhaps none of us do much more than that," I
replied, "but she is at least a thinking woman who
does not take all of her opinions at second hand. A
social leader who aims at something akin to a liter-
ary salon, with scant material at her command, can-
not treat things too profoundly or she will be left in
chilly solitude. You will find that learning in social
life is apt to become very much diluted, especially
where it is not the rule, but the exception."
She was fresh from an academic atmosphere with
academic traditions, and had vague dreams of a lit-
erary salon herself, so this subject often came up
between us.
At this time of her life I was often struck with
the equity of her judgments of people. It was pos-
sibly easier for her then than at a later period, to lay
aside personal antagonisms or prejudices and put
[20]
herself into another's place. She was talking one day
of a charming but insincere woman who had been
disloyal to her. To my surprise, she spoke of her in
terms of strong admiration, dwelling upon her gra-
cious manners, her quiet savoirfaire, and a certain
winning tact in her dealings with the world.
"I thought you looked upon her as untrue," I said,
"and here you are lauding her to the skies. Have
you forgiven her?"
"Oh," she replied, "the fact that she doesn't like
me or is not true to me makes no difference in my
opinion of whatever fine qualities she may have. I
may not trust her, but I admire people for what they
are, not for their attitude toward me. Often those
I find most fascinating do not care for me at all. If
she is not very true, she is pretty, and graceful, and
agreeable. These things count for a great deal. One
can't be everything."
It was probably a liking of the qualities rather
than of the woman, but youth is not apt to discrimi-
nate in that way. Besides, she had a sanguine tem-
perament and her personal feelings were notably
strong.
[21]
Ill
IT WAS in 1865 that I first saw Franklin MacVeagh.
After leaving the Columbia Law School he had
established himself in the law firm of Lewis & Mac-
Veagh, with the intention of making New York his
permanent home. But Fate has an inconvenient way
of upsetting one's most cherished plans. His health
failed and he was forbidden by his physicians to con-
tinue the practice of the profession most congenial
to him. It was at this crisis in his affairs that he
came to Chicago to arrange for another career. I re-
member well the pleasant July evening when Emily
first called with him, and how fresh and alive she
looked with her brilliant color set off in a gown of
soft white silk. Mr. MacVeagh, to whom she had
become engaged shortly after leaving school at New
Haven, was then a slender and rather delicate look-
ing man of twenty-five, with clear-cut features, dark
hair, thoughtful gray eyes, refined manners, intel-
lectual tastes, and fine ideals which have found a
large measure of realization in later life. At that
time his success was in the future. What seemed at
the moment to be an unkind fate led him to a busi-
ness career, but he always supplemented a necessary
[22]
devotion to affairs by an unwavering interest in the
finer things of life. In his most prosperous days he
never forgot the responsibilities of citizenship and
the obligations that wealth imposes. Everything that
made for the moral uplifting of society had from the
beginning his cordial support. In spite of the cares
and perplexities that inevitably come in the estab-
lishment of a large business, his leisure hours were
usually given to matters of the intellect. He was a
new type of business man in the earlier days of
Chicago, and in all that concerned its social, literary,
and artistic interests he had a valuable ally in his
wife.
On that pleasant summer evening all this was be-
fore him, but the underlying strength and integrity
of his character made themselves felt at once in his
conversation, and it did not require a prophet to
foretell what would grow out of them under fair con-
ditions.
But a scheme of life had to be made out. One
cannot always think or dream. One must act. In
Emily's letters to me during my absence later in the
season she speaks of the change in their plans. As
it was a vital turning-point in their lives, I will quote
a few passages, omitting those personal to myself,
though full of the sympathy and affection that col-
ored all she said and did:
"And now let me tell you of some little matters
that will change my plans since they will change my
[23]
place of residence. You know of course, that Frank
has been quite out of health for several years. A
year ago last May he left New York at a grave sacri-
fice and started out in search of health. Then he
expected to give up only the summer months, but
finding himself unfit for the laborious work of his
profession, he yielded to the urgent entreaties of his
friends and gave up his winter also. He has been
greatly benefited, and we all believe is on the sure
road to recovery if he is only careful in the future.
His brother Wayne and his physicians think that all
this time will have been thrown away if he goes back
to New York and to the law, for, in the first place,
he cannot live in New York as he is now, in the sec-
ond, he cannot live if he studies. Study is such a
mania with him that, although he might make the
best of promises in regard to it, he could not be
trusted. At first he strongly opposed the change, but
the wishes of his friends, my anxiety, and I think
his own dawning convictions, have helped to recon-
cile him, and he has consented, at least for the pres-
ent. He has dissolved his partnership in New York
and entered into a business connection with three
other men here in Chicago, which is to come into
effect the first of September. This is all that Frank
wishes any of his friends to know, and perhaps he
would think that I was violating confidence in ad-
ding that he is not of the kind to rest content with
trade and commerce, and that he does not intend to.
[24]
This bit is exclusively inter nos, you will understand,
my dear. I shall not tell anybody else, but wait for
time. But we have talked and I consider you more
than a friend. Then he already feels very kindly
towards you, and I want you to be interested in him
and like him all you can. Do you know, the most
delightful part of this change will be the pleasure of
living near you. . . .
"Have you seen anything of Mr. L. or the book
yet? He declined to see any company here the even-
ing he called. He only heard people in the next room
and that was sufficient. Isn't he peculiar in these
matters? . . .
"I am intensely interested just now in studying
the forms of the various governments and the soci-
ology of nations. Have you ever given any attention
to the subject? I have never made it a study before
and find an interest in it that is quite surprising.
There are so many things to accomplish in this life
that I almost despair of ever doing anything worth
while, yet I have all the time that anybody has I
am quite sure.
"I will send you the Nation tomorrow and the
prospectus of the coming Round Table. Are you
writing anything now? How is your strength serving
you? I shall await your coming letter with great
anxiety."
In another letter, a propos of some question that
came up at this time, she writes:
[25]
"The greatest power in the universe is love. Our
Saviour has placed it not only above all the qualities
of virtue, but has raised it to the front rank among
the great agencies of life; for it was love in its simple
purity that brought Him down from Heaven. It is
the excellence of woman's nature that it is the earthly
garden of this Divine quality. It is the great honor
and dignity of her nature that God has given her the
possession of this mightiest moral agency in all the
world, and, in the great chain of cause and effect, has
placed her one link, one long link nearer the angels
and Himself than are her brothers. . . .
"Frank and Ned Mason have finally decided to
take a little trip to the Upper Lakes and will start
on Monday. They will return in time to join our
party for the St. Lawrence, Thousand Islands, and
White Mountains.
"But revenons a nos moutons. I have been 'doing
up' the Quarterly Reviews in which I was late, think-
ing over and discussing them. Now my time is taken
up with Thiers's French Revolution. I am much in-
terested in France just now and am making a little
study of it. I have finished Horace Bynner Wallace's
book on art and travels. Someone has said that he
is an artist without ever having painted a picture
and a poet without ever having written a line. His
book is pleasant without being great, and specially
interesting to me because it takes a different view of
art from those I have been reading of late. . . .
[26]
"You know that I am interested in all you are do-
ing and in all that interests you, and you cannot be
too graphic in anything that concerns yourself. . . .
"Mr. L. was here for a few minutes but would not
stay because there was company. He is going to
send you Matthew Arnold's Essays tomorrow."
Later she writes again:
"We have had such a crowd of visitors ever since
my return home that I have found letter-writing al-
most an impossibility. Nevertheless, I have kept you
very near in my heart and thoughts. I have drawn
pictures of you every day and longed to be with you.
I suppose you have been doing an immense amount
of reading, while I have scarcely found time to look
inside of a book and that, too, just as all the Quar-
terlies are coming in again and seem, from the slight
glance I have given them, to be steeped in richness.
Mr. L. called yesterday and I gave him the West-
minster^ as he had not seen it. ...
"I don't know much more about my European
plans than I did when I last wrote. There are so
many persons and matters to consider that it is al-
most impossible to say how things will turn out yet,
though I shall probably wait until February. Al-
ready I begin to dream of some delightful studies
that we must take up together if I am here."
[27]
IV
MR. L., to whom she refers in her letters, was a
man of rare learning and still rarer intellectual
quality, whom I had the good fortune to meet the
preceding year while visiting friends. He was born
in Russian Poland, partly educated in Germany, and
became afterwards an ardent disciple of Sir William
Hamilton in Edinburgh, where he was for some time
a student. With a fine literary taste, philosophical
ideals, and a responsive temperament, he lived in the
upper air of the intellect and was a perpetual inspir-
ation. The literature and the best thought of the
world were at his command. He was no pedant, but
his mind ranged at ease in the fields of knowledge.
He was born a critic in the best sense of that word,
and only his super-exalted ideals kept him from tak-
ing his place among the lights of the day. Careless
as to matters of form, he was in no sense a man of
society, but a rare conversational charm and some-
thing in him akin to genius which never found ade-
quate expression, made one forget small eccentricities
which were due to his strong individuality and a
naive unconsciousness or disregard of conventional
values. He was a sort of Socrates, or a modified Dr.
[28]
Johnson, and if some Boswell had been near to record
his words they would have been a veritable gift to
the world.
"Mr. L. was always a Prince in our house and
everything else had to give way to him," I heard Mr.
MacVeagh say many years afterward. He was a
constant visitor there until his death nearly twenty-
five years later. But he could never be brought to
meet other company unless it were some man or
woman of special gifts whom he thought worth while
on his own ground. With the small persiflage of a
crowd he had no patience. To him it was the "ex-
change of noodledom."
If I have dwelt a little on this remarkable man
who failed to make himself heard above the din of
modern life, it is because of the keen intellectual en-
thusiasms he brought into the lives of the few he
loved and admired to the end. I have often heard
him speak in warm terms of the fine quality of char-
acter in Mr. MacVeagh, which led him to apply to
the bettering of human conditions many of the prin-
ciples that he himself held only as untried theories.
The influence of such a man in modifying a wo-
man of impressionable nature and flexible tastes, may
readily be imagined. We are, after all, the sum of
what has gone into our experience, and a little more
or a little less of one thing or another goes far towards
giving a special distinction to any individuality.
Emily Eames had the quality of taking from others
[29]
what would best fit into her own plan of life. As I
have already said, she liked to see results and never
approved of putting one's ideals so high as to inter-
fere with the practical working of things. In this
case, however, she recognized the value of the ideals
in creating fine standards, but she would apply them
in her own way. She would never sacrifice an attain-
able reality to an unattainable ideal. Then she was
impressed with the wisdom of this mentor, who had
a special niche of his own. Besides, he was unique
and interesting. But while her mind was to some
extent permanently colored by his views of things,
she was never turned far from the direction in which
her dominant tastes led her. And these were emi-
nently social.
At this time, however, she was gathering mater-
ials for future use. It was the beginning of the new
era when science was to throw in the background
many of the great thinkers of the past, but the
equilibrium between the old and the new was still
preserved, and the material side of things was not
yet the master it soon became, even in the world of
thought. Many long discussions we had on the intel-
lectual and political drift of affairs. That we had the
optimism of youth goes without saying, but Mr. L.,
who was a close student of history and political
economy, often questioned the ultimate result of so
much uniformity of aim. The effect upon literature
he specially deplored. But for the moment we were
rich in dreams, and troubled ourselves little about
what was to come. We were not yet flooded with
books written solely for money, and dealing mainly
with social problems and the dark side of a wicked
world. Those who read were not seeking crude re-
flections of themselves or the greatest amount of
diversion with the least mental effort. The latest
novel was from the pen of Dickens, or Thackeray, or
George Eliot, or Hawthorne, or Victor Hugo, or pos-
sibly Dumas. In my records of those full days there
are many notes of the books we read and the things
we talked about. Novels were not uppermost, but
it was the day of great novels and they were not
neglected. Tourguenieff's Fathers and Sons had just
been translated by the brilliant young diplomat,
Eugene Schuyler, and opened to us new perspectives
in Russian life. The idyllic simplicity of Arne took
us among the peasants of Norway and we marked
with a red letter the name of Bjornstjerne Bjornson.
We searched out everything that bore the stamp of
genius, and did not think it worth while to waste
time .over hopeless mediocrity. Ruskin was at the
height of his glory a perpetual joy and inspiration.
I think we loved in him the poet more than the critic.
We reveled in the beauties of Tennyson and Swin-
burne, worshipped at the shrine of the classics, but
thought that, after all, our sympathies were with the
great romantics who were to be the classics of the
future. We looked eagerly for something new from
Carlyle or Taine, read the Edinburgh and Westmin-
ster Reviews, pinned our faith to the Nation, and
speculated on the theories of Darwin and Huxley.
I don't remember that we felt at all learned, but the
grasp and power of Buckle, the brilliant generaliza-
tions of Lecky, the critical insight and exquisite style
of Matthew Arnold, never lost their fascination for
us. Emerson we quoted as a sage and philosopher;
Lowell and the Atlantic group were our pride. Some-
how we loved high themes and, without any preten-
sions to scholarship, went to the heart of things as
no one has the time to do today.
I cannot give a better idea of the intimate atmos-
phere in which we lived and the things in which we
were interested, than by quoting from Mr. L.'s let-
ters to myself during his absence from the city, in
the autumn of 1865. He had taken with him Lecky 's
History of Rationalism, and wrote in the first burst
of enthusiasm after coming in contact with a mind
that roused and fascinated him. With a word of in-
troduction he launches into a critical appreciation
which I should be glad to copy in full but for its
length. A part will suffice for my purpose. Referring
to Lecky, he says:
"His mind is wonderfully aggressive. You must
stand on your guard or you are lost. . . . One of
the clear-sighted, insinuating thinkers that you rarely
come across. With the exception of Buckle and Mill,
he has no peer in the agility with which he throws
[32]
an antagonist by force of mere personality, by the
mere beckoning to come 'follow me.' I have read
only a few pages, yet I feel that I must bow and walk
gently before the awful majesty of thought. . . .
After all said of Emerson's mysticism, his great aph-
orism, 'Beware when the good God lets loose a
thinker,' is eternally true. . . .
"He (Lecky) has a wonderful mind. The master-
ing of his materials, the marvelous manipulation, the
masterly disintegration of elements, the power of
sublimating and re-distilling, are beyond that of any
living man. He is literally the Joshua of thinking.
He commands the facts that have been drifting for
the last three centuries, and they stand still at his
behest. I promise myself to be worth more, to be
actually rich, and to have a large bank account of far
more value than a National currency. . . .
"Let Mr. MacVeagh and Miss Eames and you at
once obtain an introduction to that man and I pro-
mise it will pay you. You will become better ac-
quainted with the topography of European thought,
its navigable rivers, its capacity for production. The
chemistry of history will become intelligible, and the
atomic relation of facts will become manageable.
Fling behind you the vexations of wherewith to ...
and place yourself in the anteroom of a peer in the
realm of thought. I will assure you of a fine recep-
tion. How kindly he will speak to you! How sooth-
ing! For he loves truth and nothing else.
[33]
"Why do you women not become Hypatias live
for philosophy?
"I have talked longer than I intended, but I am
full to overflowing with a powerful presence. If you
feel like writing, I shall be glad to hear from you
all. . . . Why not ask Miss Eames to send me the
Westminster!"
A few days later, while still under the spell of
his first enthusiasm, he writes again:
"I am still with my newly acquired friend, Mr.
Lecky. I am as still as a mouse, I am as patient as
a child, I dare hardly breathe while he is talking to
me. His truth-loving words still charm me. Truth
is the ingrained, predominant element in his nature.
He moves up and down the whole vista of history
so gently, yet so firmly, that he astonishes you and
you wonder how a man with such slow steps makes
such quick progress. The little pebbles he has in his
slings prove deadly to the Goliath liars that are in-
festing our historical literature. What Henry Buckle
tried to do with the vast expenditure of parade and
machinery of intellectual ostentation, he, simple as
a child, taking the ecclesiastical skein and disentang-
ling it with the utmost composure, does by showing
you that the colors are not fast, that if you only
destroy the holy and sacred strand you will find
flimsy work on the ecclesiastical loom, and that the
workers, poor things, have cheated themselves and
others. Yet he reproaches nobody. He arraigns no
[34]
one for dereliction of duty. But, as a lover of truth,
he hates cant, impudence, and he thinks it better to
be told, and he does tell. . . .
"Mr. MacVeagh and his 'Julie' have my regards.
The Westminster?"
I will add still another letter written under this
same domination. But the spell is weakening. It
shows the trend of a critical mind:
"My friend: Twelve hours more and the year will
be of the bygones. That is, imagination makes the
fictitious boundary. Philosophically speaking, we
have no ground for any such boundaries. But no
more of that.
"Today is Sunday and I am with my dear friend
Lecky. I am about to depart from him for he is
about done talking and I must be talked to, so an-
other friend will have to take his place. My opinion
of his capacities and mental vision has not changed.
And yet? He too, is mortal. He too nods. It is the
fatal malady of all reasoners to string their arrows
too tight, and, before they are aware of it, the strings
snap and become loose. To the latter end he be-
comes sluggish, turbid. He moves majestically but
not with the same calm consciousness that I found
in him at first. You feel that his pilgrimage to his
Mecca must be done and so he has pluck to do it.
But what do 1 1 care for "his pluck? It is the joyous
elasticity of his mind I want, the gushing of the liv-
ing waters from the rock. It is not the ceremonies
[35]
of a Moses, his attitude to strike the barren rock,
that interest me, but the sight of the hungry masses
slaking their thirst, laving their feet in the cool
water.
"If you see Mr. MacVeagh, give him my regards.
By all means let him read the book. My regards to
Miss Eames. Let her prepare herself for Buckle,
Comte after that, and I will guarantee a glorious
harvest. Then you will talk about what you thought,
not about what you read. Adieu."
I find it difficult to omit much from this remark-
able bit of criticism which was written on the spur
of the moment while traveling. But it has a distinct
value of its own as the opinion of a contemporary
when the book appeared, and value of another sort
in showing the quality of a mind which had so per-
manent an influence on those who came in contact
with it.
Again he writes at the close of another letter:
: 'You mention Christabel to me. I think it the
most musical piece of composition in the English
language, that I ever read. I stand indebted to Cole-
ridge for a great deal. You and all women should
become thoroughly acquainted with that wonderful
man. . . .
"Lecky forever! You seem to think my currency
would be at a discount. I always expect it. I live
among men, but I am really not of them. I am as
much alone when I do business as I am in my
room. . . .
[36]
"This week must make you write if you can and
tell me what you girls are doing. Somehow, I can-
not separate you from Miss Eames. My regards to
her."
After a curious experience with an old friend who
did not comprehend his unconventional ways, he
writes:
"There is nothing inwrought in the American
heart. The capacity for subjectivity is feeble. It
deals with the objective, the There it is. Hence it
is a formal life respectable, but nothing more.
Enough.
"By the way, I called on Mrs. H. She was not as
open, elastic. Her eyes were not so piercing. That
intellectual halo which shone around her head when
I saw her last, was not there. And so the charm was
gone and I too was gone.
"I am beginning to think that there is no reliance
to be placed on the halcyon moments of women. I
can always realize my anticipation of pleasure from a
man who once gave evidence of mind. I am sure
that by a little friction I will succeed in thawing the
ice out of him. But not so with women. By conta-
gion I catch the same disease and become inactive,
lazy, and then I retreat. I feel sorry in this case
because Mrs. H. has an actual reservoir, a mind of
capacity, and I am vexed when I meet with that
class of mind and fail to enrich my experience. She
wished to be remembered to you and Miss Eames.
[37]
"Have you sent me the Westminster?
"Tell Mr. MacVeagh the next time I meet him I
shall have something to speak about and think of.
In the meantime, let him read Lecky on Rationalism.
The most masterly effort in that direction since
Buckle, and he has the advantage over B., I think.
It will not hurt you and Miss Eames to read it."
He sent me the book with the hope that I should
enjoy the reading of his "dethroned friend." It is
needless to say that I did, though we had many
lively skirmishes over his sceptical spirit.
A propos of a satirical arraignment of his icono-
clasm, he writes later:
; 'Your letter pleased me much. The novelty of
the strong spice, the fine-edged shafts that occasion-
ally were thrown at me gave a real zest. Who would
not like to be called a Swift, even if ironically? re-
fuse the laurel of being classed with Jean Paul? In
a word, I felt that it paid better to displease than to
please you. I am confirmed in my opinion that your
vocation is the satirist. There is the field where you
can reach the highest height. I bowed submissively
as the shafts flew at me, and felt a sensation of
pleasure to see the dexterity of the hand that aimed
so accurately. What a grand theme Lecky furnished
you with! There stood the selfish man, heartless,
feelingless. Bent on nothing but the present. Car-
ing for nobody but himself and, after drawing enjoy-
ment from everything, become an iconoclast. Revel-
[38]
ing in the occupation of breaking, forsaking the idols.
I was the embodiment of all that. Your pen man-
ipulated it in a masterly way. Thank you for the
picture. Yet I felt no remorse. Must I forever be
objective? Must I count the beads to prove the
worship? Never. Lecky is not dethroned, Thack-
eray is not degraded because some one else is in their
place. . . .
'You seem to counsel me to stop caring for noodle-
dom. In other words, insinuating that I myself am
not free from this mania, and etcoeteras^ 'that I can
give no better substitute.' I quite agree with you.
I am not constructive. I only possess an eye to
detect the error, but shall I abdicate that faculty
simply because I have no other? That indeed would
be poor logic. . . .
"In a few days I shall be in Chicago and will at-
tend in person at the court to receive the merited
punishment. Please read meanwhile Bentham's the-
ory of punishment. I think it will lighten the penal
code for such cases as mine.
"My regards to Miss Eames. If she feels herself
aggrieved at my conduct which I doubt very much
you can tell her if she cannot rely on my honor
that it was absolutely impossible to do otherwise,
then apologies are in vain. By the way, that is my
code on friendship at least, a part of it."
I think this had reference to some failure to ap-
pear when expected.
[39]
I do not know where to stop in quoting these
unique letters of a unique man, which really have no
place here except as they throw light on the doings
and thinkings of two rather strenuous young women.
It is as true now as when it was said by Mme. de
Sevigne, that serious reading is needed to "give solid
colors to the mind." It is certain that we had serious
reading and a good deal of it. Without being very
profound students, we were gathering the best
thought of the time, and assimilating it, each in her
own way. It is easy enough to understand that a
woman very much bent on the "how" things are to
be done, is not likely to lose herself in the mysteries
and profundities of critical thought, though she may
be tempered by it. Emily had a pleasure-loving
temperament and the tastes of youth. While she
was interested to a certain point in serious questions
she liked a great many other things. The days of
clubs and afternoon teas, which steal away so much
of the time of the modern woman, had not yet
dawned. Gaiety there was in abundance, but it was
limited largely to evening affairs, dances, theatres,
and concerts. There were evenings when we listened
with hushed reverence to Beethoven, Mozart, and
other masters, as interpreted by the Philharmonic
Orchestra. We were proud of it then, but it fell in
pieces long ago, after fulfilling its little mission. So
men ". . . rise on stepping-stones
Of their dead selves to higher things."
[40]
But these were asides, like the picture galleries
we haunted when there were any. The main note
of life was a serious and earnest one on the intellec-
tual side, with all these things for accompaniments.
The enthusiasms of the mind were uppermost. What
we lacked in knowledge we made up in reverence for
all that stood for it. I remember well a Madame
d'Hericourt who came here with the glamour of exile
about her, and gave talks on everything pertaining
to French literature and society, not forgetting poli-
tics and philosophy. Just why she was exiled I never
knew, but I have recently run across her in some
reminiscences of Madame Adam, who was the pre-
siding genius of a noted political salon in Paris. She
belonged, it seems, to a circle of philosophers and
litterateurs to whom she was best known as the writer
of a spirited reply to Proudhon and his revolutionary
theories, but a caustic and bitter temper put her out
of sympathy with her friends, who were among the
noted thinkers of the time, and she vanished for
some unknown reason to appear in this then remote
corner of the world. She was old and poor, with a
brilliant intellect and a fiery spirit which adversity
had not tamed. Many of the subjects she discussed
were serious ones, as her mind had a distinctly philo-
sophical bent, yet her lectures were novel and full
of spice. She had a great deal to say about the
salons, and was familiar with the philosophical coterie
that revolved about the Comtesse d'Agoult, the
[41]
brilliant friend of Liszt and the mother of Madame
Wagner. But its free tone did not please her, and
she had evidently been more or less embroiled with
some of these clever men and women who did not
relish her caustic strictures on their theories of life.
Naturally her comments were amusing as well as
instructive. Emily was greatly interested in her con-
versations, and exerted herself to find pupils and
classes for her. Later, she had conversation morn-
ings in her own house. I do not recall just when
Mme. d'Hericourt left. The last time I saw her she
stopped me in the street with tears rolling down her
wrinkled cheeks. "Je suis triste, je suis triste," she
said, "et je suis si pauvre." And so she went out of
our lives, after sowing seeds that bore fruit at a
later period. I have often wondered what became of
her. A brilliant, dominant spirit, she came to the
surface of life for a few troubled years, found fate
too strong for her, and with a cry of despair went
down in darkness and silence.
[42]
V
IN THE spring of 1866, Emily went with a party
of friends to New Orleans and Cuba, bringing
back memories of many agreeable happenings. Soon
after her return I left town for several months and
the records of her life during that time are found
only in a rather broken correspondence. She was
much taken up with preparations for her approach-
ing marriage, but she found time to write me of
some of her doings and many of her interests. Mr.
MacVeagh was seriously ill in the summer, and dur-
ing his convalescence she writes:
"I have gotten hold of some new books which I
have been reading to Frank since he has been able
to listen. One is Ecce Homo, by an anonymous
author. He is evidently an English Broad Church-
man and a man of much power. I want you to read
the book. The other is a series of charming lectures
on the Study of History, by Professor Goldwin Smith
of Oxford."
In a letter written from Ottawa a little later, she
says:
"The first three days I was here I read Carlyle's
Stirling and Miss Edgeworth's Belinda. The former
[43]
is the most delightful biography I ever read, to my
thinking, inimitable. Nevertheless, I am saturated
with Carlyleisms. Carlyle has undoubtedly made
valuable additions to our vocabulary, but not enough
to compensate for the immoderate vulgarisms he
makes use of. The latter book is pleasing enough,
but Miss Edgeworth is undeniably of the early date
of novel-writing. . . .
"I am enjoying Mrs. Henshaw all I can. She
shines in new splendor every time I see her."
These are only brief extracts from letters which
were full of her social doings and talk of her friends
new and old. Perhaps their greatest charm lay in
the unvarying love and sympathy that gave them
warmth and life. Late in the summer she wrote me
of her coming marriage:
" My sweet friend : I received your letter addressed
to Ottawa last night and I shall answer at once while
I have a moment of my own. I told you that I was
to be married this fall and I have been so hurried
since the day was decided upon that I have not been
able to attend to much else than the necessary prepa-
rations which have to be made for such an event. I
am to be married at five o'clock on Tuesday after-
noon, October second, with reception from six to
nine. I shall ask about one hundred and twenty-five
to attend the ceremony only my relatives and spe-
cial friends, and some people to whom I am indebted.
I am to have six bridesmaids. Carrie Caton will be
[44]
my first, then Louise Eames, Ella Hoes, Miss Mc-
Carthy a niece of Frank's who is to be married her-
self the coming winter Henrietta Butler, and my
cousin, Carrie Gary of Milwaukee. Wayne Mac-
Veagh, Sherburne Eaton, Ned Mason, Major Hop-
kins, Arthur Caton, and my brother Fred, who is
to stand with Carrie Cary, will be the groomsmen.
Mr. Hapgood, Norman Williams, and General Smith
are to be the ushers. Judge and Mrs. Caton, Mattie
Brown, Uncle Lester, and my father and mother
comprise the bridal party. My bridesmaids are going
to dress alternately in white silk and light blue satin,
with veils and a lot of little French things that Carrie
is going to introduce from Paris. My dress, as I have
written you, is of heavy, corded white silk. There is
an overdress of point lace, with veil and bertha to
match. This point lace set, with a collar, sleeves,
and handkerchief, is my bridal present from my
mother. Uncle Lester has given me a silver service,
Carrie Caton a pearl necklace, ear-rings, and pin. I
have had a host of beautiful presents in silver and
jewelry already given me, but I haven't time to
write about them now.
"Frank has gone to New York and will be absent
about two weeks. I have a cousin with me from
New York, who will be here until after the wedding.
I very much hope you will return by October first,
but in your present condition of health I dare not
urge it. ...
[45]
"I am delighted to hear that you have found such
an interesting study to divert you. Don't wear your-
self out with all your cares, but remember you have
a duty to yourself which is always as great as any
you can owe to any one else whatever or whom-
ever. . . .
"I never in all my life have had so much to do as
now. I wish you would write me as often as you
can without waiting for me. Write all about your-
self, your thoughts and your dreams.
"General Smith has come and I must go. He has
been nominated for State Treasurer. The election is
to come off in November. We have had thousands
of visitors here this week in consequence of Presi-
dent Johnson's visit.
"With great love,
"EMILY."
This letter found me in deep sorrow, watching
the slow fading of a life and trying to soften the
heart-breaking grief of those near and dear to me.
On October 2, 1866, Emily became the wife of
Franklin MacVeagh. I was too ill to return for the
wedding and it was several months before I saw her
again.
As I look back upon this period now through the
mists of years, it seems to mark the definite close of
one phase of life and the opening of a new one. The
old aspirations were not changed, the old enthusi-
asms were not dead, the old affection was not les-
[46]
sened, but the joyous irresponsibility of a youthful
friendship is inevitably lost in the pressing duties of
even the most care-free married life. Dreams must
give place to realities. Life is centralized. The soul
withdraws behind a subtle but impenetrable veil
which is lifted for one alone sometimes not lifted
at all. It is only a shadow. One cannot define it,
but it is there. It is the unconscious shadow that
falls sooner or later between all human relations, to
accent the intense loneliness of life. Perhaps it is no
more than the extension of one's horizon towards
regions which another cannot penetrate, but a new
element has come in and the scenes are shifted.
[47]
VI
WITH Emily's marriage came new interests and
new duties to absorb her time. But she brought
to bear on her changed life all the tastes and pur-
suits of the past, which were by no means dropped,
though they were turned into other channels. She
inherited many of the strong business qualities of
her father, who was a successful man of affairs.
Whatever aims she had, she took a practical road to
their realization. What to another might be an inter-
esting fact or bit of knowledge, she appropriated at
once as something that could be utilized. She worked
towards tangible ends. Other things must often be
sacrificed to win success on specific lines. This is in
itself a distinct talent, or rather combination of tal-
ents. It is preeminently an American gift, if it may
be called a gift. It lies at the root of great business
successes among men, and implies executive ability,
with a fine discrimination of values as related to
special aims. Among women it is the talent par ex-
cellence of the social leader, as it brings into play a
wide range of intelligence and character. It was to
a social life that would combine the charm of gra-
cious manners with the seriousness of a finer intelli-
[48]
gence that Emily turned her thoughts, and, whether
consciously or unconsciously, the tastes and interests
of her youth had all led in this direction.
I remember well the enthusiasm she brought into
the arrangement of her first permanent home after
her marriage. She used to say that one of the favor-
ite amusements of her childhood had been the draw-
ing of houses, and she always gave so much space to
the nursery that there was no room left for anything
else. She had outgrown this error of proportion, but
she still loved to plan houses and was not at all con-
tent to pattern them after those about her. She
must have artistic surroundings as well as comforts.
It was one of her theories that people express them-
selves in the building and furnishing of their homes,
just as they do in the making of books and pictures.
And this was what she did.
It was just after the great fire of 1871. She had
lost all her belongings, and her father had given her
a new house of her own, on Michigan Avenue. The
furnishing and settling of this house were a keen
delight to her. Curiously enough the only book she
had saved from the flames was Eastlake's Household
Art) which she diligently studied. But she was not
content with books. She went to New York, searched
for new ideas, and gathered her materials with the
aid and advice of some artist friends whose names
have since reached world-wide fame. In her scheme
of color, her decorations, her furnishings, she con-
[49]
suited experts in design, and modified their plans ac-
cording to her own taste. The result was a novelty
at that time, when decorative art was usually crude
and inartistic. I still have in my mind a vivid pic-
ture of her library with its deep dado of dark blue
velvet, the black and gold Japanese paper above,
which served as a background for a few choice en-
gravings, and the broad frieze of robin's egg blue
with designs in Cashmere color extending to the ceil-
ing. In the drawing-room gold dolphins darted about
in a sea of deeper Roman gold, and exquisite Persian
rugs of sapphire tint covered the inlaid floor. Some
well-chosen Turner water colors adorned the walls.
The atmosphere of the rooms was cool and restful.
It was a harmonious setting for those who liked to
gather there, among whom were included many rep-
resentatives of the finest culture of the time. Some
had already won distinction, while others were strug-
gling towards it. Among the well-known men and
women who shared the gracious hospitality of the
house then and later, were Matthew Arnold, the great
Salvini, Ristori in the zenith of her fame, and Oscar
Wilde in his palmy days when his brilliant conversa-
tion held spellbound the admiring groups that gath-
ered about him, and nothing presaged his tragic fate.
But Chicago was still young, and the spirit of
enterprise and money-getting overshadowed every-
thing else. When cities are being built and vast
schemes which make for material prosperity are in
the air, there is little time and possibly less dispo-
sition to wander in the flowery but unpaying paths
that lead towards a finer culture. There was a lim-
ited circle, however, which kept alive the love of
things of the intellect, and it was one of Emily's cher-
ished aims to widen this. She formed classes among
her friends, laid out plans of study, and roused social
interests of a new sort. There were pleasant morn-
ings when a group of women met in her pretty draw-
ing-room for French conversation, each one being
expected to tell a story or relate an experience, in a
language that was far less familiar then than now.
There were also studies in the history of different
periods. All this has long since become a thing of the
past or assumed broader proportions. At that time
it was new and the members of the little coterie were
full of the freshness and enthusiasm of youth. Some
have since entered larger fields of work, others have
grown sad and silent under the touch of years and
sorrow, many, also, have gone where we cannot fol-
low them, though we may hope that they have found
a fuller life in an unknown sphere. But living traces
of these early enthusiasms were left behind, and rich
fruit has grown out of them.
Among other things that Emily planned for her-
self at this period, was a scheme of reading that was
to embrace the history of the world. Grote, Momm-
sen, Merivale, Rawlinson, Ranke, and a multitude of
minor authors, were included. How far she succeeded
in carrying out this rather colossal undertaking I
have now forgotten, but I well remember the energy
she put into the beginning of a course that must ex-
tend into years. She was too social in her nature for
a profound or persistent student, though she always
religiously set apart certain hours for reading. She
loved life too well, and she would hardly have claimed
to be a serious or systematic thinker. But she liked
to glean from all fields of knowledge, and took a keen
pleasure in the acquisition of facts. Her real talent,
however, was for inspiring others with her own en-
thusiasms. She wished to create an atmosphere in
which all talents would grow and flourish. A definite
gift was always a passport to her favor, and her gen-
erosity was extended to any one who was struggling
under adverse conditions. It was to aspiring talent,
rather than to sordid poverty and ignorance though
she was not unmindful of these that her aid was
given, and many a gifted worker under the blighting
pressure of care for the wherewithal, has had reason
to bless her for active sympathy and substantial en-
couragement.
[52]
VII
DURING these years Kate Newell Doggett was
the centre and leading spirit of a circle devoted
to the social and intellectual advancement of women.
She was herself a woman of wide culture and broad
interests, full of energy and enthusiasm to inspire
others with her own aims, catholic in her sympathies,
and a natural leader. Her intellectual tastes were
varied and serious, including literature, philosophy,
history, art, science, and an active interest in all the
vital questions of the hour. She could hardly claim
to have made a profound study of all these things,
but she was well versed in many subjects. She spe-
cially excelled as a botanist. I recall a collection of
pressed flowers that she had brought back from some
of her journey ings, in which each one was arranged
and labeled with the dainty touch of an artist who
had made a life-long study of this craft. It was
greatly admired and brought a substantial price at
the Sanitary Fair near the close of the war. She also
classified and arranged a valuable collection of plants
that was given to the Academy of Sciences by Doctor
Scammon a work demanding not only great knowl-
edge, but a deft hand. To accomplishments of this
[53]
sort, she added a distinct gift for languages. Many
of her friends have occasion to remember the pleas-
ant mornings at her house when a little circle met to
study the great French, German, and Italian classics.
There we read Racine, Moliere, Corneille, Victor
Hugo, Alfred de Musset, and other authors less
known. In the evenings we had little plays, some-
times French, sometimes German, or Italian, or Span-
ish. The air was alive with zeal for mastering foreign
languages and unlocking their sealed treasures.
Prominent in this small group of amateur actors
was Ellen Martin, so widely known later in the phil-
anthropic work of the city as Mrs. Charles Henrotin.
I shall never forget the first time I saw her, as she
came in one morning with her clever sister, fresh
from a seven years' residence in foreign lands and the
training of French schools. She was a vision of blue
and white that summer day, with the care-free face
of youth, graceful manners, and a sunny smile that
held small prophecy of the serious interests and ardu-
ous labors of her mature years.
There were other evenings when we were asked to
meet various celebrities or interesting people, and the
conversation ran over a wide range of topics. There
was gaiety also, and dancing or music served as a
spice for the more serious side of the entertainment.
Previous to this time, dancing had been the universal
amusement and the main resource in all social affairs.
Mrs. Doggett was not averse to dancing, and danced
[54]
herself with a good deal of the energy which she put
into everything she did, but she realized that the true
spirit of social life lies in the head, not in the feet,
and that dancing is only one of many modes of ex-
pression. So, wherever it was possible, she struck a
high note in conversation, and her dark eyes sparkled
with enthusiasm when she met a sympathetic re-
sponse. It did not suffice that she loved high themes
herself. She was eminently social and the thing near-
est her heart in those days, I think, was to enlarge
the scope of social life and put it on a finer basis.
There were other women here of talent and accom-
plishments, but they were in a degree individual and
apart, except as they found a sympathetic atmos-
phere in small circles without unity of aim or any
special cohesive quality. In a few houses, one was
sure to meet men and women of taste, exceptional
intelligence, and often of distinction. There were
charming evenings at the McCaggs', the Brainards',
the Ogdens', with the best of talk, good music, and
the refined simplicity that is growing rare today.
The tone of these coteries was distinctly intellectual,
but their influence was passive rather than active, as
they dealt with present, not with possible or pros-
pective results. I heard Mrs. Brainard, who was de-
voted to things of the intellect, say that she was on
the alert for every form of talent, but was often dis-
appointed to find that it was not always socially
available. Still, all this counted in the great current
[55]
that led to wider diffusion of an interest in the best
things.
But it was Mrs. Doggett who first concentrated
the intellectual life of the women of Chicago and
made it an active force on social lines; and we all
know today what that means to the standards of
culture. The dancing world was disposed to look
askance at her innovations. The amusement lovers
were glad to go to her house when asked, but they
shook their heads at the advent of "blue-stocking
parties," voted them dull, and declared them too mis-
cellaneous when they included superior people whom
they did not know. At this time, which was in the
late 'sixties, she had the salon idea as developed more
than two hundred years earlier by Madame de Ram-
bouillet, who had gathered about her men and women
of every form of talent and distinction, practically
creating a new society on intellectual lines, which
eclipsed the court and left lasting traces on the life
of the time.
Among those who entered most actively into all
these aims and amusements was Emily MacVeagh.
She had quickly identified herself with the older wo-
man's interests, and gave her substantial assistance.
She was less emancipated in her opinions and less
decided on the questions then beginning to be much
discussed regarding the political status of women.
Perhaps she was not of the stuff out of which reform-
ers are made, and radical she certainly never was,
[56]
but she entered heart and soul into every scheme
that was likely to add to the social and intellectual
culture of her sex. But the situation had its diffi-
culties. In a young civilization men are apt to look
askance at movements that add little to the sum of
available utilities. A man may go to hear a play
given by his amateur friends in a foreign language,
if it be sufficiently amusing and not too long, but it
is too much to expect a modern man of affairs to
give either mornings or evenings to the reading of the
classics in any language. Mrs. Doggett was suffi-
ciently of her time to see that the conditions of two
hundred or two thousand years ago had ceased to
exist and that old forms could not be repeated. We
had no leisure class, men were largely absorbed in
business or professions, and those who cared to meet
on an intellectual ground were not too numerous.
It was necessary to create a wider interest in the
intellectual side of things, and this work was clearly
to fall upon women if done at all, with the aid of a
few men of special tastes and talent in that direction.
[571
VIII
IT WAS under these conditions that The Fortnightly
was organized. The plan of a society devoted to
the social and literary interests of women was first
broached at a luncheon given by Mrs. Doggett to
twelve friends who were more or less in sympathy
with her aims. Some were enthusiastic, some were
timid, but a nucleus was formed and the idea became
at once an assured fact. This was in the summer of
1873. Not long before, the Sorosis had been estab-
lished in New York and the Woman's Club in Bos-
ton, but these were on slightly different lines. The
Fortnightly was among the first of the societies that
are numbered today by thousands, and are the most
potent of the factors making for the larger influence
of women.
Of this society, Emily was one of the founders
and most active supporters, giving lavishly of her
time and strength to make it what it is today, one
of the most dignified and influential in the country.
From time to time she served it in every official ca-
pacity, and she was a very efficient president for two
terms. Her strong executive qualities gave her a
voice in all its councils. She called to her aid the best
[58]
available talent, whether literary or executive, and
never hesitated to be positive where its interests were
concerned. If she differed at any time from others
about these interests it was an honest difference, and
she pursued the path which she thought the best with
a persistence that rarely failed of attaining its end.
For this she was ready to make many sacrifices and
the results usually justified her. How deeply she had
the permanent welfare of the Fortnightly at heart is
clearly shown in her bequest of a trust fund of twenty-
five hundred dollars, the income of which is to be
spent for lectures before the society by eminent non-
residents this trust fund to be known as the "Emily
Eames MacVeagh Lectureship."
One has only to glance at the personnelle of the
Fortnightly in its infancy to see that it was intended
to be cosmopolitan. There were many kinds of talent
which contributed to its success. Some of its founders
were scholarly, some were literary, some were strong
in administration, some in executive ability; others
represented life mainly on its social and appreciative
side. Though it was a literary society the qualifica-
tions for membership were not exclusively literary or
scholarly. Mrs. Doggett had the insight to under-
stand that this would limit its influence, as such a
society would be likely to fail in variety and cohesive
quality. Besides the material was lacking. Her
tastes too, were aesthetic as well as serious, and she
liked to foster the touch of grace given to life by due
[59]
attention to its forms and amenities, the "just enough
and not too much" which adds beauty to the solid
temple without weakening it. With the end she had
in view, she showed great wisdom and avoided much
antagonism, in trying to preserve a certain balance
between the more studious element and a social ele-
ment that must be intelligent and appreciative of the
best things, though it might be neither actively liter-
ary nor profound.
I had left Chicago after my marriage six months
earlier, and it was several years before I saw it again.
But I remember well the vision of the far-reaching
influence of such an association that came to me on
reading Emily's letter containing the details of its
organization, which found me among the historic hills
of Bohemia a vision which I am glad to say has
been fully realized.
Among the most prominent of the founders was
Ellen Mitchell, whose memory is tenderly cherished
by all who knew her. She was a woman of wide in-
telligence, scholarly tastes, fine ideals, and a bound-
less energy born of the bracing air of the sea-girt and
wind-swept island of Nan tucket where her youth was
spent, and where she sleeps today within the sound
of the tossing waves. I have in my mind a very clear
picture of Mrs. Mitchell's face as it appeared to me
the first time I saw her at one of Emily's French
mornings. The strongest impression left by its grave,
firm outlines, was one of great intellectual and moral
[60]
earnestness, and this, I think, was the keynote to
her character. The traditional New England con-
science showed itself in an unswerving faithfulness
and devotion to her convictions, and to her ideals,
which were of the highest. She had a generous ampli-
tude of mind and heart which found no place for
pettiness or pretension. Tall and slender, with fair
hair, blue eyes, simple, unaffected manners, and an
attaching personality, she was the type of a Puritan
woman softened and broadened by contact with the
world, but always stamped with truth and sincerity.
Her literary enthusiasms were strong, and she had
the live touch of imagination which inclined her to
idealize the gifted ones whom she loved and admired.
She served the society ably in many capacities and
was its third president. Whether she presided or
wrote scholarly papers, counseled or worked in other
ways, she was always an active force and her influ-
ence was distinct and permanent.
Mary H. Loomis, the second president, was a
valuable executive officer, wise in council, calm, dig-
nified, discriminating, conservative, and disposed al-
ways to keep within traditional feminine lines.
Emily MacVeagh added a keen appreciation of
intellectual things, an untiring energy, fresh enthu-
siasms, a passionate love of life on its social and aes-
thetic side, and a magnetic personality, to a rare
ability for working towards practical ends. There
was a variety of talent and each one gave what she
could. One was ready of mind, fluent of speech,
eager for all knowledge, with a warm heart that en-
tered spontaneously into every good object whether
literary or philanthropic. One was quiet, studious,
always ready with her considered thought and de-
voted to fine ideals; one was fresh from years of study
and foreign travel which were not then an everyday
affair; one was amiable and conciliatory, with the
enthusiasm of youth and a vision of many forms of
culture; one united fine aesthetic ideals and a versa-
tile intellect with a large love of humanity; one was
graceful and radiant, with hopeful eyes, seeing much
and wishing to know more. One who combined a
love of the best literature with a generous activity
in all good things, spoke well and wrote well, was
president three terms, and held most of the impor-
tant offices in the gift of the society, was Mary H.
Wilmarth, who still lives to bless the world with her
gracious and smiling presence.
Some loved books for their own sakes, others
loved life with a seasoning of books. But grave or
gay, social or scholarly, worldly or unworldly, all
were animated with the same purpose. Together
these women formed a strong and efficient body that
worked long and well in the interest of the Fort-
nightly, which was very near to their hearts, and
they deserve to be held in grateful remembrance.
It was Mrs. Doggett's pleasant mission to fuse
these elements and get from each the best she had
[62]
to contribute. Forceful, intelligent, with a keen ob-
servation, acute sensibilities, a strong will, and rare
versatility, she had a great deal of the Gallic social
spirit and a distinct talent for leadership which
brought into service all her other gifts. She was not
beautiful, but she had a dominant personality. Her
features were sharply outlined, her sable hair fell in
curls at the side of her face, and her dark, penetrat-
ing eyes were more apt to flash with spirit, or intel-
lectuality, than to melt with tenderness. A strong
will was stamped on every line of her expressive face.
But she was kind and generous, especially to strug-
gling talent, and always ready to give both time and
strength to the eager student who was handicapped
in the battle of life.
In its first years the Fortnightly was practically
devoted to enlarging the mental horizon as well as
the knowledge of women, who were not, as a rule,
so well equipped in the essentials of a university
education as their sisters of today; though I may be
accused of heresy when I say that whatever they may
have lacked in exact training was largely offset by
singleness of aim and seriousness of thought. There
were fewer, too, who assumed to know and judge on
a very slender basis. So long as learning was not in
fashion there was little motive for affecting it. When
it did become the fashion there was a strong tempta-
tion to pretend to a great deal that did not exist.
Human nature has not greatly changed since Ovid
[63]
said that a few women of his own time were learned
and a great many wished to be thought so. But
genuine knowledge has always its modest reserves.
However, the society grew and flourished. In a
letter of February, 1883, Emily writes of it:
"We are in new quarters. I was put upon the fur-
nishing committee and had both building and fur-
nishing to look after, pretty nearly by myself, as the
rooms were built for us in the new Art Institute.
There were three on the committee, but the other
two were absent until the work was three-quarters
done. We solicited money from the members. I
wrote over a hundred letters myself, from twelve to
fourteen pages long, explaining our scheme, and we
raised in this way nearly thirteen hundred dollars in
contributions ranging from five to a hundred dollars
each. This has kept me very busy. The board ap-
propriated one thousand dollars for furnishing, and
you can imagine we have very pleasant rooms, though
they are not yet completed. The membership is to
be limited now."
The Art Institute referred to here was the build-
ing in use previous to the completion of the present
one. It is now occupied by the Chicago Club.
In August, 1884, she writes from Maplewood,
New Hampshire:
"I find it just about a month since your welcome
letter was received. It came with the Democratic
convention, and guests, and hosts of friends from
[64]
everywhere. We enjoyed that week exceedingly. Di-
rectly afterwards we came East and after a few days
at the Brunswick in New York we came here. I
thought seriously of trying the Adirondacks after
your letter, but Dr. Johnson thought that Frank had
better on the whole come back here where he could
have greater facilities for riding and driving. We
have found some old friends and made some charm-
ing acquaintances, so are contented and satisfied.
. . . The Bonapartes from Baltimore are here, and
our friends, Colonel and Mrs. John Hay of Cleve-
land, and others from Philadelphia and Boston.
"I had letters forwarded from home last week con-
taining letters of introduction brought by Professor
Jebb of Oxford, who has been in Chicago. We were
very sorry to miss him. He is said to be very enter-
taining and altogether interesting. I think his Attic
Orators delightful.
"I am afraid you have left Lake Placid. When do
you expect to be in Chicago again? as early as
October loth? I believe that is the date of the first
Fortnightly meeting, but I am relying on my mem-
ory entirely. If you are there I hope you will talk a
little about the Art of the Moors. I have promised
to look after the art interests this year and I am
looking to you for substantial aid on all the Art
afternoons. Chicago is charming in October. It is
so long since you have been there at that time that
I fear you may forget that it is our best month.
"Did you know that the Decorative Art Society is
to renew its monthly meetings? You will be needed
there, too. I hope you are doing well this summer.
Do you feel any better or stronger, and have you
begun any half-hours of writing yet? I wish you
were as strong as I am, yet I have not the strength
I once had, though enough I am sure to more than
satisfy you. I am reading several hours a day. I
brought one trunk full of books and I hope to do
some good work in this way before my return home. "
The Decorative Art Society was one of her special
interests from the beginning. She was among its
founders and active supporters, also one of its presi-
dents, and she refers to it often in her letters then,
and later, after it was merged in the Antiquarians
with different aims. Its work was in the line of her
tastes, which were always aesthetic. It contributed
greatly to the growth of the art spirit in the details
of life, also to the collection and preservation of rare
and artistic things.
Her strongest impulse in this direction had come
to her through the Centennial Exposition of 1876,
which changed the artistic ideals of the entire coun-
try. It was an education and a revelation. Emily
spent six weeks in Philadelphia making herself fam-
iliar with the mysteries of form and color as well as
with the great works which had grown out of an
artistic past. She talked with artists of world-wide
fame and gathered materials for future use in the
[66]
building, furnishing, and decorating of her various
houses. All this fostered the instinctive taste which
always guided her modes of living.
IX
"Thy fate is the common fate of all.
Into each life some rain must fall."
THE great sorrow of Emily MacVeagh's life came
to her in the spring of 1882, in the loss of her
little daughter Edith, a child of rare qualities of
character and of mature intellect, with judgment far
beyond her eight years. It took the light from her
home and, for a long time, the motive from her life.
Coming like a thunderbolt out of a singularly clear
sky, it left father and mother alike shrouded in dark-
ness. Three other children had already been taken
almost before they began to live. But this one had
survived to twine herself about their hearts and be-
come a vital part of their lives. Their cherished plans
interested them no more, and the hopelessness of a
great grief fell upon them like a black pall.
During the first stunned months society was out
of the question and even reading was impossible.
After a brief trip to California in the vain search for
distractions which did not distract, Emily's charac-
teristic courage and resolution came to her aid. She
could not command her thoughts, but she could force
[681
herself to mechanical work. In the absolute neces-
sity of finding a vent for her energies and relief from
incurable grief, she set herself to learn wood-carving.
For months she gave her time to this new occupa-
tion, as many women take up sewing under like con-
ditions, finding, possibly, in the unfinished thing of
today a much-needed motive to live until tomorrow.
Among other things that she carved was the table
she gave to the Fortnightly, which has stood ever
since on the platform in its rooms. This mode of
occupying herself was dropped when her life became
more or less adjusted to its altered conditions, but it
had served its purpose in making possible these hours
of voiceless pain.
It was only the day before Edith was taken ill
that her mother came to me with a paper on Dante
which she had written for the Fortnightly and which
was read by a friend at the appointed time. It
brought up many questions relating to the ecclesias-
tical spirit of the age. Religious matters troubled
Emily little then, except as speculations. The next
time she came, a few weeks later, it was on her way
to a Lenten communion service, in a passionate seek-
ing for the consolation religion might offer. She had
found, as many do in seasons of crushing grief, that
an impenetrable veil had fallen before that other life
in which the sad problems of this are to be solved.
What she thought she believed, seemed a shadow
rather than a certainty. In vain she sought the re-
pose of an unclouded faith. It was not there and
refused to come at her bidding. Her family were
Presbyterians, but after her marriage she allied her-
self with the Episcopalians and went with her hus-
band to St. James's Church. Its service was more
in harmony with her tastes and her natural love for
forms and ceremonials. These gave her a certain
consolation, appealing as they do to the bruised
heart, but I do not think she ever had an unques-
tioning belief in religious dogmas, and at this time
she felt the foundations of hope slipping from her.
The search for light was pathetic and prolonged, but
if her reason was never wholly satisfied with any
creed, her buoyant temperament came to her aid.
What she could not know she hoped, and hope is
often an illumination when faith wanders in a mist.
How she settled these things in later years I am not
sure, as the subject rarely came up between us after
these days of sharp grief; but she was not intro-
spective, and her outward glance was always towards
the light.
A son, Eames, was still left to her, a delicate child
who grew to a comparatively vigorous manhood and
repaid the care and affection that were so lavishly
given him, with an unfailing love and devotion to the
mother who had centred all her hopes in him. But
the four that were gone left a vacancy that could
never be filled, and she was forced to occupy her sad-
dened days with other interests.
[70]
some time Emily had been considering plans
for a new and larger house on the North Side, but
these were dropped after Edith was gone. Neither
father nor mother had the heart to design another
home which could never be graced by this idolized
daughter. It was one of the moments when the ma-
chinery of life seems to stop and nothing more is
worth while. But, after all, the world moves on, and
its duties as well as its burdens have to be taken up
and carried to the end. There are others to be
thought of.
In a few years these plans were again considered
and the building and furnishing of the well-known
house on Lake Shore Drive absorbed Emily's time
and thought for a long period. The wound was al-
ways there, for something vital had gone out of her
life, but the need of expressing herself was still strong,
and she brought much of her old enthusiasm to the
work. She discussed all the details with H. H. Rich-
ardson, the architect who designed the house, attend-
ing herself to the minutest points, entering into
questions of cost with the grasp of an experienced
man of affairs, often overseeing even the workmen,
[71]
that nothing might be slighted or go wrong. A letter
of January, 1886, from Thomasville, Georgia, gives
a glimpse of what she was doing and thinking about
at intervals while the work was in progress:
"My dear friend: Your note came just as we were
leaving for the South and as I only decided to come
with Frank the day before we left, I was overcrowded
with things to do, since the household matters had to
be arranged for until we move into our new home.
Doctor Ludlam takes possession of our present house
January fifteenth, so I had to plan everything for
Lina to carry out.
"I sent your books to the office addressed to you,
but without a word of thanks, which please receive
now as I am really indebted for their use and your
kind information.
"Frank didn't grow any better, was taking more
cold constantly, and we suddenly decided to wait no
longer. He is improving rapidly now, walking about
town and sitting on the piazzas or in the woods with-
out any top-coat, the thermometer standing at 74
degrees entirely too warm for my comfort. We
hope to be back in Chicago by February fifteenth.
I shall not go to Europe till the late spring I think,
so I am hoping now to hear your paper at the Fort-
nightly.
"Tell me all that occurs of any interest in any of
our clubs or elsewhere before you leave. If you
should be in Chicago the fourth Tuesday in January,
[72]
:
please help Mrs. Dexter in the discussion on Dress
at the Decorative Art meeting. I had promised to.
I don't know when the special meeting of the Fort-
nightly is to be held. Nothing was to be decided till
this week."
She carried the affairs of the various societies al-
ways on her mind. Now it was the course of study
in the Fortnightly, which at this time was limited to
the sixteenth century, now it was the election of Mrs.
Jewett, the efficient president of the Decorative Art
Society, or some important topic of discussion. Again
it was the Browning class which met at Mrs. Mitch-
ell's to read and discuss the poet, especially on his
ethical side. It is not the subjects on which she
dwells, but the best arrangements for presenting
them, and the changes that make for the interests of
the societies. She has all the details in hand and calls
to her aid those who are best versed in the affairs of
any special department. She speaks too, of the de-
lays in her house, and touches upon various personal
matters.
In 1887 she writes just after Christmas from the
hotel, where she was awaiting the tardy completion
of her own house:
11 Your charming remembrance was my first Christ-
mas greeting and I hasten to tell you how very greatly
I appreciate your sweet thought of me. I feel sure
many a kind wish was wrought into your exquisite
handiwork. The St. Cecelia delights me. The face
[73]'
teems with religion and poetry. How superbly your
sister has translated it! Won't you give me her ad-
dress that I may write and tell her how divinely it
speaks to me? I have already a place for it in the
library of our dear home if it is ever made ready for
us. The time seems so hopelessly far off.
"I can't attempt to tell, except orally, of our de-
lightful trip abroad. Athens was to us all the best
of everything, though we were not there quite three
weeks.
" But, of you why are you such a bird of passage ?
Don't you consider Chicago your home any longer?
Do establish yourself here and cease your flitting
ways. The Fortnightly misses you. Do some of your
serious thinking on this subject."
It was in the spring of 1888 that the finishing
touches were put upon the new house and the family
moved into it. For a long time Emily had been ab-
sorbed in the details of furnishing and in collecting
rare and beautiful things from the ends of the earth.
In this pleasant occupation she was quite at home
and she never considered it ended. There was always
something new to be placed, some corner to be filled.
But there was no suggestion of a museum in the
result. Everything fitted into its surroundings and
made a part of the general harmony. The subtle at-
mosphere of a refined home lent a charm to the taste-
ful but never crowded rooms. Whether it was the
carved screen window from an old mosque at Ahmed-
[74]
abad, with its quaint design and its exquisite tracery;
the finely shaded rugs from Persian looms; the pre-
cious French tapestries; the beautiful Salviati glass in
tints of ruby, smoke, and gold; the Romanesque pil-
lars of African marble from the Nile quarries, which
framed the tropical luxuriance of the tall palms
beyond; the wonderful old ivory carvings from India
and Japan; the altar decorations of rare and delicate
Persian lace, or the interesting collection of jade and
crystal everything had its significance and its nat-
ural place. The centre of the family life was the
spacious library with its well-filled shelves of books
carefully chosen but not for their bindings and
carefully read. The room was hung with French
tapestries and portieres^ the large fireplace gave it a
cosy air, and scattered about were Arabian, Pom-
peian, and Japanese lamps, old bronzes, Tanagra
figurines, statuettes, and various other things of
more than commercial value but never out of pro-
portion with their setting.
In these artistic surroundings Emily expressed her
dominant passion, her love of beautiful things con-
secrated by the sentiment and taste of an immemor-
ial past. Her love of a refined and cultured social life
also found expression here. Scholars of distinction,
authors, artists, world-famed musicians, statesmen,
and noted men of affairs met here the versatile and
clever women of a gayer world, as well as those of
special gifts and attainments in simpler garb. Among
[75]
the well-known people who gave distinction to these
interesting rooms were Charles Eliot Norton of Har-
vard, Prince Wolkonsky and Princess Schahovskoy
of Russia, Doctor Lumholtz, the noted scientist and
traveler, Coquelin, Henry Irving, Henry James, the
De Reszkes, Alice Meynell, Harriet Hosmer, Emma
Eames, Henry M. Stanley and his accomplished wife,
John Morley, Mrs. Craigie, Ambassador and Mrs.
James Bryce, and in turn, most of the foreign as well
as native celebrities who came here with suitable
introductions. Calve sang and danced in the beau-
tiful music-room, which was decorated after one of
the rooms at Fontainebleau, and many guests have
gone from the clever talk of the dinner table to listen
for a brief hour to some famous artist who inter-
preted the subtle dreams of Chopin, the profound
harmonies of Beethoven, or the complexities of some
later master.
In August, 1889, Emily writes me from Inter-
laken, to Baden-Baden, where I was passing the sum-
mer:
"Well, well, so you are really here. Your welcome
letter following us to three different places has just
overtaken us. It is delightful to feel that you are so
near, though we are not likely to meet unless in
Paris. When did you come, by what ship, and when
shall you return? Do write me all about it. I hope
Baden-Baden will set you on your feet. I was in
Aix-les-Bains for a week and over. Mrs. John Sher-
[76]
wood was there and so attentive that I was glad to
get away and join Frank and Eames at Vevey, where
they were en route to join me in Aix-les-Bains. Mrs.
Sherwood, I mean, introduced me to so many and
had me so much invited and entertained at dinners,
receptions, picnics, etc., that I found myself wearing
out under it all, as I had been half ill for a fortnight.
I shall have a lot to tell you about my experience in
Aix-les-Bains, when we meet, also of our visit in Lon-
don, where we had a charming three weeks. My cous-
in, Sir Digby Murray, gave us a dinner, and Lord
Coleridge, a luncheon. The Lincolns did several
things among them a delightful dinner party. We
were at the Edmund Gosses' at a reception, also at
the Alma Tademas', meeting many distinguished
people at all these places, and enjoying it all very
much. The theatres were interesting, too, and, in
spite of all our gaiety, we had some delightful hours
at the picture galleries and the great museums. I
found some fine old things for the house, too, in
England. We bought two beautiful pictures, one a
coast scene in oil by J. M. W. Turner wasn't that
a find?
"I have no special news from home except Miss
Whitehouse's engagement to Ned Sheldon. I suppose
they are already married. ... I am going to Paris
early next week. My address there will be 20 Rue
d'Urmont d'Urville, Champs Elysees. We found here
on our arrival Mary Ogden Strong and her family.
[77]
I saw a good deal of them. She has gone to Paris.
The Willings are here, and the Marshall Fields, and
several other friends not from Chicago. I do hope
we shall meet in Paris. Frank and Eames join in
kind regards to you and Mr. Mason. They greatly
regret missing you at Baden-Baden."
In the summer of 1890 she writes me from Maple-
wood, New Hampshire. I was still in Paris revising
my papers on The Women of the French Salons for
collection in a book. A part of her letter was de-
voted to my own work. As it was characteristic, I
give it with the omission of a few personal para-
graphs:
"My dear, dear friend: Your most welcome letter
came just as we were leaving for the White Moun-
tains, and I brought it along with your delightful
article in the July Century. Your Salon articles have
been most acceptable everywhere. They have made
a great hit. The New York Evening Post said they
had made Salon articles the fashion and that all the
papers were clamoring for them other Salon articles,
I mean. I didn't see this notice myself, but both
Frank and I heard of it and tried to get a copy to
send you but failed. Shall you publish the articles in
book form? I hope Doctor Charcot has put you en-
tirely on your feet again.
"Mrs. Hamill, the present president of the Fort-
nightly, wished to write you about your articles, and
said she would send you the society's subjects for
[78]
the coming year. She and Nina Lunt were both can-
didates for the presidency, and Nina was not elected,
though she made a good running. Owing to my posi-
tion, I could not enter actively into the campaign.
The last year of my administration was many times
more successful than the first. Many innovations
were introduced in the way of outside essayists,
speakers, readings, and receptions. Louis Dyer gave
one of his illustrated Lowell lectures on Greece, show-
ing views with a dark lantern. Mrs. Kendall spoke
for an hour and a half most interestingly on the
modern stage, actors and actresses. She had great
success. We gave an afternoon reception to Miss
Amelia B. Edwards, and Mrs. Erving Winslow of
Boston (who had just had such a success in London
with her Ibsen readings, having been introduced by
Edmund Gosse, and having in her audience the dis-
tinguished Ibsen scholar, William Archer, also Mr.
Gladstone and several other noted people), gave a
course of four of Ibsen's plays before the Fortnightly.
Our members having papers directly after the dis-
tinguished strangers, were Mrs. Boardman, Ellen
Mitchell, and Nina Lunt. Each was on her mettle
and gave us a brilliant paper that stood the com-
parison to the entire satisfaction of all and made
everybody feel that the standard of our work is good.
The year was to all but two or three very enjoyable.
"We took a cottage this summer here. We are
leaving soon now to wind up our holidays with a
[79]
short visit to some friends at Bar Harbor then after
a few days in Boston, New York, Newport, and Bryn
Mawr (at Wayne's country house), we shall go home.
Let me hear your future plans whenever you can and
I will try to be a better correspondent. Frank asks
me to tell you that he has been very gratified at the
evident impression your papers have made on the
Century people themselves, as they have treated them
with more marked consideration than any series of
articles have received within his recollection. Frank
thinks you have done in them valuable work. I know
you would have enjoyed being here as they were
coming out, but the interest will live and give you
much pleasure when you do return. I hope you will
be able to go on with some literary work. Have you
any in hand?
"Mrs. Dexter and her family, and Grace Howe are
in Europe, but will return in October. Mrs. Simp-
son's and Mrs. Rogers's death you have likely heard
of. Judge Beckwith died last week. What a mourn-
ful ending I am making of my letter! Do write soon."
The year of the Columbian Exposition saw the
realization of many of Emily's lifelong dreams. It
was a year of unalloyed pleasure, though not without
care. Her house was a centre for many distinguished
guests from all parts of the world, and she moved
among them with a smiling and gracious hospitality
that none who saw her will forget. Her face was
radiant with much of the old enthusiasm, and I have
[so]
a vivid picture in my mind of her brilliant coloring set
off by the delicate tints of pink, or blue, or palest
green, which she usually wore. Her manner was
quiet, but sympathetic and cordial, and she had to
an eminent degree that invaluable quality in a host-
ess, the self-forgetfulness which puts her guests in
the foreground and calls out the best there is in them,
instead of imposing her own personality.
Late in the season, she had the Princess Scha-
hovskoy staying with her for a month. This Russian
lady of fine ideals, great exaltation of spirit, and a
certain simplicity of life and character that is more
often found with old traditions than among new
distinctions, was a maid of honor to the Empress and
represented her at the World's Fair with marked
ability. She was also an amateur sculptor and made
a bust of Mr. MacVeagh while here. This pleasant
friendship continued and resulted in several meetings
at Paris and elsewhere.
[81]
XI
DURING all these years of Emily's social activi-
ties, Mr. MacVeagh had been untiring in his
devotion to the interests of the city in which he had
cast his lot. He was a successful man of affairs and
his business had grown to large proportions, but he
always found time to give both money and thought
to the moral and intellectual upbuilding of the com-
munity in which he lived. In 1874 he founded the
Citizen's Association. He was also president of the
Municipal Art League, and started the crusade for
ridding the city of its deadly pall of smoke. He has
done much valuable work on the executive committee
of the National Civic Federation which, growing out
of the Chicago Civic Federation, was designed to
federate public activities in various directions, phil-
anthropic, educational, and reformatory. Among the
trustees of the University of Chicago he held an hon-
ored place, and he was for many years one of the
generous guarantors for the Thomas Orchestra. He
was president of various clubs and a frequent con-
tributor to the Chicago Literary Club, of which he
was a prominent member and sometime president.
As an after-dinner speaker he was especially happy.
[82]
Many of these speeches have been published, among
them one made at a banquet of the Commercial Club
on The Responsibilities of Wealth^ and one on Labor
Unions. He also wrote a carefully considered paper
on Father Marquette, showing a lively interest in the
early history of this country. Modern industrial
questions had a vital significance for him and he
gave much time and thought to composing the differ-
ences between capital and labor. He recognized the
claims of justice, and his attitude towards the trades
unions was a friendly and impartial one so long as
they were managed on sane lines. In 1884 his con-
victions led him to cast his fortunes with the Inde-
pendent political party, which included so many able
and far-sighted men. But he was never a politician.
In 1894 he was nominated for the United States
Senate on the Democratic ticket. As it was the
unanimous voice of the convention this was regarded
by some as equivalent to election. Always a loyal
patriot as well as citizen, his firm principles, strong
integrity, broad views, and long study of political
and social questions, eminently fitted him to sit in
the councils of the nation. He had carved his own
fortunes and stood for all that is best in American
life. Conservative by nature and education, un-
swerving in his fidelity to what he deemed the high-
est good of all, his active intellect never permitted
him to lose sight of the vital issues of the hour. But
he could not stoop to the arts of the demagogue with-
[83]
out which the best and strongest are likely to fail,
especially if they combine with high ideals the culture
and refinement that proclaim the gentleman the
world over.
Mr. MacVeagh made a strong running but was
not elected, to the great regret of the many who
had vainly hoped that a popular government might
mean the rule of those best fitted by knowledge, ex-
perience, and character, to judge of a country's needs.
The result of the election was an unexpected land-
slide involving the party throughout the country.
Perhaps no one could have stemmed the tide of polit-
ical feeling that swept men into power and out of it,
regardless of personal qualifications. In any case,
the din of a political campaign with all its bitterness
of attack and its false as well as humiliating criticism,
could have had small charm for a man of Mr. Mac-
Veagh's type. No doubt he would have been glad to
serve his country in the Senate and he would have
served it disinterestedly and well, but he was never
tempted to become a candidate a second time.
This brief record of a busy and useful career shows
how many interests were centred in the pleasant
home on the Lake Shore Drive. In its numerous
gatherings there was always a delightful blending of
serious conversation on the vital topics of the time
with the lighter persiflage of society. The duties of
a citizen toward the world in which he lives were
never forgotten amid the elegancies and amenities
of social life. The keynote was more likely to be
struck by a distinguished author or artist, or states-
man or educator, but there were clever men and
women to follow the lead, and gaiety was not far
away. It was never necessary to resort to cards to
fill the hours. Indeed, the distinction of this house,
which plumed itself on its regard for the amenities
and did not forget the lighter diversions, was that it
maintained a certain tone of intellectuality in all its
amusements, though these were never dull or sombre.
[851
XII
BUT the shadows began again to fall and failing
health touched the springs of Emily's exception-
ally vigorous life. Then, as always, she proved her
indomitable courage. Brought many times to the
verge of the unknown, which is so near to us although
it seems so far, she rose from a bed of suffering to
resume her old place, as oblivious of pain as if she
had never felt a touch of it. Only the pallor of her
face betrayed her sinking vitality.
In the meantime her still restless energies must
have an outlet. One scheme always followed another.
No sooner had she realized a cherished design than
she was straightway absorbed in something else.
When her city home was completed though she
never ceased to make changes and add to her artistic
treasures she began to plan a country house.
In July, 1895, sne writes me from Dublin, New
Hampshire:
"My dear friend: Really your going to Europe
quite takes my breath away. Why didn't you go
last year while we were there? I like to have my
friends at home when I am. But what decided you
so suddenly? Where are you going, for how long,
and when shall you return? Do write me all your
[86]
plans and send me your permanent foreign address.
"We very much enjoyed all the exercises in con-
nection with Eames's graduation at Harvard. We
gave dinners for him and had dinners and other en-
tertainments given for us in Boston that were delight-
ful. But you don't care for such things, as you were
born social and grave, rather than social and gay.
"I like Dublin exceedingly and expect to stay here
until September first. Frank returns August first.
It looks as though we should have a place here for a
permanent summer home. We have already made
an offer for a farm here and I am drawing house plans
for it most of my leisure hours."
The farm was bought and the first designs grew
into a fine mansion with extensive grounds and many
acres of wooded land in the shadow of Mount Mon-
adnock. From the broad verandah one looks down
upon a beautiful lake and across the hills to the
Green Mountains nearly as far as the distant Berk-
shires. It is an ideal spot for a summer home, cool,
quiet, and secluded, with numerous other homes
scattered about among the trees and hills within easy
driving distance. But it was some years before these
plans were fully realized.
The autumn of 1895 found me in Nice, where I
had gone with the hope of reviving my husband's
failing health. In November, Emily wrote me a long
letter from which I will take a few characteristic
passages.
[87]
dear friend: Your dear letter came to me in
Ai wfldn nf i mifiril iitnr from which I am slowly
lHIJnj up, not yet having had a dress on, only tea-
j --.--< .-.--/ .-..-'xc'ts I was take* tfe ippendkttb
July istnUuK but Doctor Billings and Doctor Mc-
Arthur (a great sreon) were able to reduce the
fever so that the operation didn't have to be done
then. But it was inevitable, and as every one in the
was ill, I persuaded these
|4mifiMK (alter tfcev had taken three days to
it) to do tkts operation for me without
Frank, Mocker, Fatkcr, Fred, or Isabel, knowing it.
Doctor Riflings told Father and Frank that I must
take bis rest-cure (wkkk meant complete isolation)
in preparation far the operation. He and I then per-
suaded Frank to go to Dublin as he couldn't see me
until the middle of September. . . .
"To make a long story short, we kept our secret
from the family for three weeks and they all nearly
collapsed when they heard it later. . . .
"A month ago we had a letter from Wayne, asking
us to meet them in Cairo on December fifth, to go
up the Nile and spend two months in Egypt, then to
return to Rome for the rest of the winter and spring.
As we shall not be able to do this I do not know
whether they wiD grre it up or not. Let me know
when you expect to reach Rome and I will write
diem freshly about TOUT stay there. ... I am sure
you will see more or less of them after I have written.
You will remember that Maude Elliott has an apart-
ment in the Palazzo Rusticucci. . . .
"Most of my old set of friends are back here. Mrs.
Dexter returned this morning and will be here for a
part of the winter. The Palmers will be here until
February, when they may go to Russia.
"Prince Wolkonsky comes over to deliver the Lo-
well lectures in February and will deliver the same
course here later. I am going to ask the Princess
Schahovskoy to come and pay me a visit at the
same time. Mrs. Adams spent seven weeks with her
in Russia this summer and brings back the most de-
lightful account of her friends and surroundings.
"The Fortnightly meetings and Thomas concerts
are perhaps more charming than ever and the winter
promises to be very delightful socially. . . . Do let
me hear from you soon with all news of yourself."
But the demon of ill health still pursued her. It
was visible between the lines of all her letters, though
she had lost none of her interest in her pursuits or
her friends. The shadows fell heavily about her for
the next two or three years. The loss of her brother
and her father, with the continuous illness of her
mother, took much of the brightness from her life.
Then came two more surgical operations of the most
serious and critical nature. But her characteristic
energy asserted itself. In the intervals of suffering,
she occupied herself with plans for building and fur-
nishing her country home.
[89]
In 1900 she made a tour of the world with her
son and spent several weeks in India with her friend
Lady Curzon, wife of the Viceroy, and well known
in Chicago in her early years as Mary Leiter. On
this journey she gathered many rare and beautiful
things, some of which found a place in her home
among the hills when it was completed soon after
her return. She had the passion of the collector, but
it was tempered always with the desire to share with
those she loved the pleasure these things gave her.
In bringing to her own doors a few of the well-chosen
treasures of the centuries, she utilized the taste and
observation of her life and found expression for her
love of everything beautiful and artistic. It was not
the glitter of gold that she sought, nor the garish
splendor that so directly suggests its material source,
but the values that spring from intellect and taste
whose products are mellowed by time and conse-
crated by the subtle sentiment which the years have
left behind.
I visited her at this home in the summer of 1903.
Perhaps a few extracts from my letters at the time
will give a better idea of the place and the life there
than anything I could say now.
" Knollwood, Dublin, New Hampshire,
"July 16, 1903.
' I had a lonesome ride yesterday but no trouble.
The train was late, but Mr. MacVeagh was at the
station to meet me and we drove out in his trap. It
[90]
is a beautiful drive of five miles and he had a spirited
horse that flew over the road in the crisp, life-giving
air.
"The house is large and rambling like an old manor
house. It was cold, and there was a bright wood fire
blazing in the spacious hall, also in the reading room,
where Emily had a glass of sherry and a biscuit for
me before going to my room. It was late and I had
to dress for dinner, but I could not help glancing out
of my east window at the semicircle of wooded hills
and the garden of flowers below. There is a broad
verandah with a semicircle extension opening into a
vine-covered Italian pergola which leads to a pretty
little summer house. My room would delight you.
It is almost as large as both of ours thrown into one
and has four windows, as it is open on three sides.
The light summer furnishings are very dainty, and
the well-appointed writing table suggests endless let-
ters. No small detail is wanting to add to my com-
fort. The maid came up to help me unpack and
brought some lovely pink roses for me to wear at
dinner. We dined at nine as other guests were late.
'Yamei Kin, the interesting Chinese lady we met
in Chicago last spring, is visiting Emily here. She is
picturesque, as well as charming, in her beautiful
Chinese costumes, with the inevitable roses worn low
in her hair on each side. She is finely educated,
gifted, speaks perfect English, and talks well. Her
tastes are scientific, indeed she is a physician, but
her interests are various and cosmopolitan. After
dinner we drew about a cheerful fire in the living-
room and discussed the affairs of the world and the
universe until nearly midnight.
"This morning I slept until nine o'clock, then rang
the bell and a maid brought me a delicious cup of
coffee, some scrambled eggs, toast and fruit a can-
teloupe and fresh raspberries with more beautiful
roses. The ladies here have breakfast in their rooms.
Emily rises at six as usual, interviews the servants
and the gardener, and gives her orders for the day.
Then she goes back to her room, and her breakfast,
and her letters or books, or whatever she has to do.
She is a perfect hostess and plans the day for her
guests. They drive a great deal and there are invi-
tations for every afternoon this week."
"July 17, 1903.
'You asked me to write all about everything.
Well, that would be rather difficult to do unless I
wrote all the time. But you will like to hear about
the place since you could not come. There are four
hundred acres, and five cottages hidden away some-
where among the trees, besides the main residence.
The spacious front verandah looks out upon a broad
terrace, a gem of a lake below, and a wide sweep of
beautiful country as far as the Green Mountains.
From the dining-room, which is hung with panels of
Genoese cretonne in lovely designs, there is a fine
view of Mount Monadnock, which dominates the
countryside.
[92]
"The entrance hall and the space above the broad
staircase are frescoed in black and white, with hunt-
ing scenes from English country life. Passing through
a pretty room on the left you descend two or three
steps into the living-room, which is of colossal pro-
portions seventy feet long, thirty-three feet wide,
and eighteen feet high. It is hung with early French
and Flemish tapestries, and decorated with exquisite
embroideries, Japanese screens from one to eight cen-
turies old, a lamp from Damascus, one from a Japan-
ese temple, another from India, high French stand-
ards with candelabra of modern design, and many
other rare and curious things from the other side of
the world. There is old English furniture that might
have graced a mediaeval hall, and some of the lighter
and more graceful designs of today. The walls are
lined with books. At one end of the room there is a
raised dais which serves for music, readings, or any-
thing else in the way of entertainments. At the other
end is a Roman doorway taken from an old Roman
palace. The massive renaissance pillars of black
carved wood twined with vines and leaves in gold
relief, reach to the lofty ceiling and frame a large
fireplace. A beautiful rug covers this part of the pol-
ished floor, and here is where we gather round the
tea-table, and in the evening when a bright fire is
blazing.
4 Yesterday we took a long drive through the woods
and went to a tea given by Miss U. of Boston."
[93]
"July 1 8, 1903.
"After finishing my letter yesterday we drove
round the lake and went to Mrs. F.'s reception. I
met a great many Boston people there, among them
Colonel T. W. Higginson, who is a delightful talker,
serene and clear-sighted. The atmosphere of this
house is literary without being academic. The
daughter writes novels that are good, and plays the
harp well.
"Doctor Carl Lumholtz, the Norwegian biologist,
archaeologist, and traveler, came last night. We met
him in Chicago six years ago, you remember, at a
large dinner at Mrs. MacVeagh's. He has spent a
great deal of time among the primitive tribes of
Mexico and Australia, and made a name in the
scientific world by bringing to light a great deal
about them which had never been known. After
dinner he told us about his life among these savages
of the lowest order, sang some of their wild, weird
songs, and showed us the steps of their strange, bar-
baric dances. Yamei Kin has taught Eames many
of the Chinese dances, which seem to consist largely
in graceful posturing, with a fan, and they went
through these afterwards. Then we discussed civili-
zation, the art of living, immortality, and the occult,
until a late hour. Curiously enough Doctor Lum-
holtz, who belongs to many of the most learned so-
cieties of Europe and has lived in the centres of
civilization, finds a certain fascination in absolute
[94]
barbarism. I wonder if we are destined to go back
to it in some future age? Isn't it the logical result of
the leveling process?"
"July 19, 1903.
"Emily gave a dinner last night for fourteen guests.
The table was a dream of flowers, the cuisine perfect,
and the talk delightful. I have never made a great
account of money, you know, but it does give one a
great many pleasant things, not the least of which
is the charm of artistic surroundings. Emily has
taken many ideas of social forms and fine artistic
living from the English country-houses where she
has visited. These she has adapted to our own sim-
pler needs. Then she is sure to have clever people
about her, so the conversation is worth while and
never dull. She is not drowned in her accessories as
so many rich people are. But the accessories are all
there.
"I don't leave my room usually before eleven, so
I am having a fine rest. I slip on a neglige and write
my letters at the pretty little writing table, with a
vase of roses in front of me to suggest the freshness
and color of life. Then we drive and pay visits in
the afternoon. The fine houses are far apart, scat-
tered over the hills and along the lakes in the woods.
Each is different from any other and they are so
lost among the trees that you do not see them until
they loom up just in front of you. Many of them are
quite simple, but some of the grounds are very ex-
[95]
tensive. They seem to think nothing here of going
ten miles to luncheon or dinner.
"The reception for me is to be on Tuesday and I
am to read a paper. Think of me then."
"July 22, 1903.
"The maid kindled a bright fire in the fireplace
when she brought my breakfast and it looks very
cheerful. I am going to drive later and afterwards
to a small literary affair at Mrs. O.'s, a discussion of
some classic, I think perhaps it is about a point in
Faust. But I will scribble a few lines first to tell you
about the reading.
"It poured all day and I thought no one would
come as the distances are so great, but the spacious
room was filled. Doctor Robert Collyer, who was to
introduce me, failed to appear in the rain. He was
here at luncheon on Monday and kept us all laugh-
ing for an hour with his amusing stories. He is as
brilliant as ever and as sympathetic. When he went
away he asked me what he should say. I told him
the safest course was to say nothing at all, as it was
really a great risk to say pleasant things that might
not be lived up to and of course he couldn't say
anything unpleasant so he would be saved any mis-
givings afterwards. Mr. MacVeagh introduced me
in one of the humorous speeches in which he is so
happy, and said many nice things. Emily added an
appreciative word, which was encouraging, even if
exaggerated as it was sure to be. But one never
[96]
quarrels with rose-tinted opinions of oneself, though
when one is put on a pedestal there is always the
fear of tumbling off. I was a little nervous, as you
may imagine, with such men as Colonel Higginson,
Doctor Lumholtz, and other critics, as listeners.
However, I went through the ordeal, and if people
didn't like the paper they pretended to so success-
fully that I could not see the difference, or even feel
it. They seemed enthusiastic. The tea hour after-
wards was very agreeable, and there were various
cheerful bits of discussion on the points taken up.
Altogether, I am quite satisfied with the apprecia-
tion.
"P. S. Doctor Collyer and his friends arrived
bright and early this afternoon to hear the reading,
only to find that it was 'the day after the ball.' He
had mistaken the day, much to his apparent regret,
and neglected to consult his card a second time.
Memories are unsafe things to depend upon."
But all things have an end, pleasant visits in-
cluded. Two years later I was there again. The
party was larger and gayer, but I was sadder. In
the interval I had lost my husband and been left
alone. There are no intimate letters to record the
life, but I recall it as full of interest and color. Among
the guests were Mrs. Jack Gardner of Boston, who
was very much alive in many directions, and Mrs.
Leggett, who had just come from her London house
where she goes for the gay season and comes back
[971
fresh from a rich and varied experience. Loving the
world of forms and amenities, she has also a keen
insight into the serious side of things, and the happy
art of interspersing thoughtful asides of talk in the
midst of the gayest scenes. Her knowledge of men
and the world gave a special zest to these little asides,
which ranged from the last book, or the character-
istics of some well-known people, to sociology, or the
philosophy of the occult, which interested her greatly.
In the evenings Mr. Pumpelly, the noted archaeolo-
gist, gave us some thrilling adventures in Central
Asia, or the lights were lowered and a brilliant pianist
rambled through the rich treasures of Chopin or
Tschaikowsky or some other master of musical ex-
pression. Then a pretty young girl sang exquisite
Irish songs and English ballads. There was infinite
variety, but nothing trite or commonplace. Emily
never forgot the children and planned a pony-show
for them in which the six little sons of Mr. and Mrs.
Charles MacVeagh grandsons of the Hon. Wayne
MacVeagh rode to their great credit and delight.
At the pretty Casino Mr. MacVeagh read an able
paper on Labor Problems. So life was seen on every
side and amusement was spiced with thought.
[98]
XIII
IN THE spring of 1906 Emily planned extensive
additions to her house and after her arrangements
were completed, sailed with Mr. MacVeagh for Eu-
rope. Her doings there were chronicled in two or
three letters which give a better idea of what she
called "the summer of her life," than anything I
could say:
"Carl ton Hotel, London, June 20, 1906.
" My dear friend : We have been here just five days
and are already up to our necks in engagements.
Frank and I had agreed not to let any of our friends
know we were here for a week. I suppose, however,
that our names must have been published in the
Carlton list of arrivals, as we have seen or found
cards and invitations from most of the people we
know. Mr. and Mrs. Meynell called the day of our
arrival, as did Mrs. Patrick Campbell and Stella.
Mrs. Craigie came the next day and has already had
several invitations sent to us, and taken me to see
some famous historical houses.
"Among others, she took me to call on Consuelo,
Duchess of Marlborough, and we have just received
cards for a function there tomorrow when Mr. [now
[99]
Sir] Owen Seaman, the editor of Punchy is to read a
short paper, and there is to be music afterwards.
The Duchess is called a beauty here. She is very
distinguished and entirely a grande dame. She is a
cordial and captivating hostess. Her face is of the
frail and delicate type, with soft brown eyes and
hair nearly black, which she wears after the manner
of the women in Sir Peter Lely's portraits. She is
always beautifully gowned, and always looks pictur-
esque."
"June twenty-first. We dined at Mrs. Leggett's
last night. The Ambassador and Mrs. Reid were
there, the Marquis of Granby and Lady Granby, and
several of the Montagues and Yorkes. There were
two tables in adjoining dining-rooms and, altogether,
forty guests. Mrs. Leggett presided over one table
and her daughter, Alberta Montague, over the other,
which was mostly composed of young people. Both
Mrs. Leggett and Alberta have a genius for enter-
taining, so the dinner was unusually brilliant.
"Yesterday after writing you we went with Mr.
Meynell to have tea with Mrs. Hunter, the friend of
John Sargent, who has painted her several times,
also three of her daughters and a son. These are con-
sidered perhaps his best portraits. They are large
and decorative, and fill the wall space of two draw-
ing-rooms which were, in fact, cut away to give them
just the right setting. The portrait of Mr. Hunter,
done by another artist, hangs in a dark corner.
ioo
Mrs. Hunter, Amazon-like, looks quite the remark-
able woman she is supposed to be. She has much
humor and a dashing manner. We had the jolliest
of visits, full of gaiety and laughter, and we are very
much pleased to have seen those marvelous portraits,
which I hope to tell you more about some day."
"June twenty-sixth. We lunched at* the Ambas-
sador's yesterday and learned the awful news there
of the murder of Stamford White. Many who were
at the luncheon knew him and we all felt bowed to
the earth. I believe there is no man whose life was
so important to America from an artistic point of
view as his. How terrible! How horrible! He is
greatly mourned at our Embassy.
:< Yesterday we attended our second garden party
at Stafford House and met no end of Americans.
The Duchess of Sutherland is as democratic as she
is beautiful. We have been asked to her ball next
week. Eames and I met her two years ago and were
her guests three times that season. Social affairs in
the London smart set are certainly very fascinating.
The appointments are all full of splendor, the Eng-
lish women so delightful and the English men so
fetching. We know now so many people in various
sets that I wish we might be here from the middle of
May until the middle of July for some years to
come."
Emily had entertained Mrs. Craigie at her own
house the previous winter and her first visit was at
her friend's country home. Her letter from there has
a peculiar interest, as it recalls incidents of the last
days of the gifted young author's life.
"Steephill Castle, Ventnor, Isle of Wight.
"July 9> I 9^-
"My dear friend: Frank and I came here Satur-
day to spend the week end with dear Mrs. Craigie.
She has been unceasingly kind to us since she found
out that we were in London. She came directly to
our sitting-room without announcement, fluttering
in like a bird in clouds of muslin. In a minute she
had us down on her tablet for a dozen or more at-
tractive functions, and asked us to come to Steephill
Castle for this date. The Castle belongs to Mrs.
Craigie's father, Mr. Richards, a handsome, kindly
gentleman of the old school. Some time I must tell
you how finely Mr. and Mrs. Richards, without
harming exterior or interior, have arranged quaint
suites of rooms for their two daughters and two sons.
The Castle is kept open the year round, the climate
being always good, so that the children see much of
each other here, and they are really devoted, each
admiring the other for various gifts and differing per-
sonalities. Mrs. Craigie is the eldest, but not yet
thirty-eight. She took us through the Castle today.
It is very large and full of historic interest. Its foun-
dation dates six hundred years back. It has a splen-
did hall and stairway very high and fine. It has
drawing-rooms, with-drawing rooms, family rooms
[102]
galore, and a large library all with ceilings twenty-
five feet high. Then there is a fine Anglican chapel
with a rose window and wonderful carved seats and
altar the latter always dressed in lace altar covers
and an old silver altar service. Mrs. Craigie, being
the only Roman Catholic in the family, does not
worship here.
'The grounds surrounding the castle with vistas
of garden, the long sweeping lawns, and the meadows
beyond, the stately trees of centuries' growth near
by, and the high rugged moors shutting in the land-
scapeall go to my heart and soul. You would love
the place, it is so full of beauty. Mrs. Craigie grows
dearer and dearer. I wish you might know the ro-
mantic and almost dramatic life she has lived, and
how really loved she is by various classes in London.
The Princess of Wales adores her and gives her great
privileges. She took me in London to call on several
friends, not only to meet them but to show me the
superb rooms in many of the great houses. We went
to tea at the houses of other duchesses besides the
Duchess of Marlborough. I can't go on to name
them, for I have been writing longer than I thought
and now we are going for a last drive through another
part of Ventnor, then to London. Tonight we leave
for Scotland to spend a week with Mrs. Leiter, then
back for a second dinner at Mrs. Leggett's, where
we are to meet more noted people, some of whom
have entertained us charmingly. The next day Frank
[ 103 ]
sails for home. I will try to write again from Tulloch
Castle, Mrs. Leiter's summer place. Lady Curzon
has been so ill that I haven't seen her. Mrs. Craigie,
her very intimate friend, has seen her once lately.
She has been so low that 'Big Ben' was stopped.
This has not occurred for a century, and never before
except for royalty. But it was near and greatly dis-
turbed her. However, she is much better again. Mrs.
Leiter went to Scotland Saturday."
These plans were changed a little by the sad
death of Lady Curzon, and the sudden, almost tragic
close of Mrs. Craigie's promising career three weeks
later. They had been intimate friends in life. In
death they were not long separate. Following in
such quick succession, these crushing events cast a
heavy shadow over the season in London. Emily
had planned going to the North Cape and to Ice-
land, but she changed her course and went instead
to Paris, where she stayed the rest of the summer.
In November she sent me a line from London just
before sailing for home. After referring to her mem-
orable visit so consecrated by sad memories, she
said she was just going to see Mrs. Craigie's parents
and sister at their town-house one of the saddest of
visits. Then she added a few words:
"I came last night, arriving in one of the most
dreadful of fogs. I am sailing Saturday on the Car-
onia and after a few days in New York I shall be in
Chicago.
[ 104]
"Socially I have had the summer of my life. I
have seen a great many people of the old French
society, something of the Bonapartists, attended
luncheons and dinners galore, and hobnobbed in a
way with the dear and charming Empress Eugenie,
who was my neighbor at the Continental for three
weeks. Here I have invitations for luncheons, din-
ners, theatres, etc., until we sail. I hope to see you
soon. If possible write me at the Waldorf, New
York.
"I am very tired though happy and jolly, but not
at all well in spite of my goings on.
"Lovingly,
"EMILY."
[105]
XIV
THE tastes of both Mr. and Mrs. MacVeagh were
cosmopolitan, though wherever they went they
were always loyal to Chicago and devoted to its in-
terests. But the world of 1907 had moved far from
the world of 1866. Its ideals were not the same. Its
modes of expression had changed. It worshiped at
new shrines. People talked no longer of the literary
gods of the earlier generation, or, if they mentioned
them at all it was to call them old-fashioned and
obsolete. Instead of Dickens and Thackeray and
George Eliot, people were reading problem novels
which solved nothing, novels to prove something and
twisted accordingly, or novels written for money
alone and often without a trace of artistic value.
These served to amuse the idle hours of the multi-
tude who did not wish to think, and many of them
were fit only to be cast aside and forgotten after their
brief day was over. Among those with finer ideals
and an artistic conscience, Henry James and Mr.
Howells led the small procession, and Edith Wharton
followed closely, but the delicate touch of an artist
was apt to be lost in the flaring headlines that ad-
vertised the best seller. People had ceased to burn
their incense before literary gods, and said their
[106]
prayers to commercial ones. Ruskin, whom we had
adored in the earlier days, had become simply a
brilliant but erratic dreamer with a special talent for
word-coloring. Carlyle and Taine, with their wealth
of thought and prophetic vision, were outgrown and
tossed aside for the last compiler of facts. Ibsen had
replaced Shakespeare in this strange new world,
which left Tennyson and Goethe dust-covered and
forgotten on the book-shelf, while it gazed with won-
dering eyes on the dazzling pyrotechnics of Bernard
Shaw. It was the fashion to deal with economic
questions which had to do with money, or sociolo-
gical ones which held out vain hopes of some Utopia
where there would be nothing to do but "eat, drink,
and be merry." The spiritual issues of life seemed to
be relegated to those who made a fad or a business
even of these.
But knowledge was in the air, at least the vapor
of it. Every one felt himself or herself perfectly com-
petent to give a final opinion on any subject, from the
creation of the world to its government and ultimate
destiny. So many theories were floating about that
they quite obscured the sun. Clubs had multiplied,
and these kept up a lively interest in what was going
on in the world of the intellect, especially among
women, but they were drifting further and further
towards the popular, the amusing dwelling mainly
on the superficial aspect of things.
Society had become an affair of elaborate func-
tions and fine clothes, of receptions, and luncheons,
and formal dinners, and afternoon teas, with men
largely eliminated. The quiet coteries where people
talked of vital things in the spirit of those who love
high converse for its own sake and for the light
evolved, were cast into the shade. Individuality was
crushed out in crowds.
As I have said before, it was in the social side of
life that Emily MacVeagh was specially interested
and where she made her influence most felt. She was
distinctly of her age and responsive to its lightest
touch, but eager to adapt old ideals to new condi-
tions. She brought all her resources of knowledge
and taste to unite various elements in a cosmopoli-
tan society which would represent the best in thought
and culture without falling into academic dullness.
Not that an academic society is necessarily dull, but
it is not often cosmopolitan, and the element of
gaiety is likely to be left out. It was her aim to
create an atmosphere of distinction and good breed-
ing in which talent of whatever sort could find both
expression and appreciation. But she loved the forms
and amenities and fostered all the arts of refined liv-
ing. The difficulty of fusing these various and often
contradictory elements is apparent. People who
really think to serious purpose do not take readily to
a social life in which thought simply glides pleasantly
over the surface of things, and the world of forms is
apt to tire of conversation that dips into realities and
[108]
deals in solid coin. The fusing element lies in a sym-
pathetic personality, and this Emily had to a large
degree. The company in her house was a varied one
within certain conventional limits. She welcomed
talent and intellectual power, even in the rough, if
the ability was large enough to strike a balance with
the minor conventions. Every gift had her sympathy
and every high aspiration her encouragement. This
spontaneous sympathy was the keynote to her char-
acter and her social success. It led her far sometimes
towards idealizing those who appealed to her heart
and imagination. She had the charity which forgives
or, at least, covers much in a brilliant personality.
I have spoken elsewhere of Mr. L., whose remark-
able intellect and scholarly attainments had so pro-
foundly influenced our early lives. While he lived,
his hatred of sham and pretension, his insistence on
essential values, his rare critical insight, his severe
literary tastes that made no compromise with medi-
ocrity, and his pronounced aversion to artificial life,
were a constant offset to Emily's love of external
forms. She appreciated his point of view, even
though she could not always adapt her own pursuits
to it. Her liking for things of the intellect was ac-
centuated by frequent contact with a wonderfully
clear-seeing mind and rare knowledge, but her love
of aesthetic surroundings and elegant forms was only
tempered, not lessened by it. Her social ideals were
rather modified than controlled by an influence which
[109]
aujond was foreign to them. It did not prevent her
from taking a large account of combinations, which
is inevitable if society is to be considered as a fine
art, as it is at a certain stage of development.
Mr. MacVeagh was in full sympathy with his
wife's tastes, but he had also a distinct realization of
the magnitude and significance of the questions so
prominently before the modern world. For years
these had been subjects of constant discussion with
the master mind, which considered them from a phil-
osopher's point of view in their relations to a chang-
ing past, as well as to an unknown future. Mr. L.,
like most thinkers who have not started out to prove
a theory, was sanely conservative, with a mind open
to truth in whatever direction it might lead him.
As years went on he saw more and more clearly the
drift of things and their logical outcome. He was
familiar with the past conditions of the world and
all of the great currents of thought which had in-
fluenced its destinies since the days of Plato and
Aristotle, or further back from the time of the He-
brew law-givers. He was not constructive, possibly
he was a little abstract in his reasoning, but he had
always at his command the philosophical history of
the ages, and it is no doubt true that human nature
remains at bottom the same and moves in cycles,
even if spirally upwards.
But Mr. MacVeagh was in the world of affairs in
which practical issues were coming up at every turn
[no]
and he saw the need of compromises in the working
order of things. This led him to study the applica-
tion of modern theories to modern life, and to meas-
ure them by the light of past experience. He under-
stood that the secret of influence lies in grasping
altered conditions, in seizing and directing new forces,
not in ignoring them. Though naturally disposed to
be conciliatory, he was forced to take an independent
attitude towards political questions and a fairly ju-
dicial one towards the trades unions in the inevitable
conflicts between capital and labor which marked the
late nineteenth century and the early days of the
twentieth.
I have dwelt a little upon Mr. L., because his fre-
quent presence in the MacVeagh family for so many
years had largely influenced its habits of thought.
But he had gone out of the world in 1889 and left a
void in the lives of those who knew him well that no
one else could fill. His memory was still fresh and
green, and his influence was still a living one, but
perhaps the ideals he represented had lost some of
their force in the new age which held to variable
standards and dazzling effects. An impressionable
nature cannot escape the pressure of its time, and
Emily, I think, had left many of the ideals of her
earlier days behind her in the larger and more com-
plex world in which she found herself. Her tastes
were the same, but one must move with the current
or be submerged. Her special domain, so far as the
[mi
outside world was concerned, was a social one, and
she still believed, as we all must, that numbers are
fatal to the genuine spirit of any society, above all
an intellectual one, or, rather, a society spiced with
things of the intellect. But the drift of the age was
more and more towards miscellaneous gatherings
united by no tie save the broad human one, and
merging individualities in masses, or drawn together
for some purpose quite foreign to a distinctly social
one.
This tendency had a curious culmination in the
winter of 1907, when Mrs. Potter Palmer was asked
to open her stately and luxurious home for a meeting
of the National Civic Federation with the trades
union leaders. It was thought that a better under-
standing could be reached if the conflicting elements
could be brought together on a semi-social ground.
Mrs. Palmer combined a love of the gay world with
a keen interest in the vital problems of the day. She
had been the honored president of the Board of Lady
Managers of the Columbian Exposition, and had
filled other responsible positions with marked ability.
Her beauty, her social prestige, her gracious manners,
her large hospitality, and her administrative talent,
all fitted her to be a successful hostess on an occasion
that called for infinite tact and penetrating knowl-
edge of people.
On this eventful evening Mr. August Belmont,
president of the Civic Federation, and Mr. Seth Low,
one of its most efficient officers and supporters, were
the chief speakers for the objects of the Federation.
On the other side were some of the most active of the
trades union leaders. A series of pictures thrown up
by a camera furnished an object lesson and a text,
showing the great progress that had been made in
improving the conditions of the wage-earners. The
invitations were limited to those actively interested
in the questions discussed, or definitely related to
them, and included a few of Mrs. Palmer's personal
friends. Mr. MacVeagh was chairman and presided
with his usual tact and discretion. He was interested
in the legitimate aims of the unions and had often
used his best efforts to compose the constantly re-
curring difference between capital and labor, in the
spirit of strict justice. But he saw the dangerous
drift of events and the need of a clearer understand-
ing. It was doubtless a good thing for each side to
know what the other was doing and thinking, but I
was struck with the fact, which has been demon-
strated from the beginning of the world, that the
side on which the strongest passions are enlisted is
quite sure to override the party of reason and pre-
cedent in a public discussion. There is a certain mag-
netism in the voice of stirring passions that is apt
to sweep an unthinking crowd into the belief in any
grievance either real or imaginary. Reason and jus-
tice are as helpless before it as a dove in a tropical
storm. In spite of an effort to be courteous and con-
ciliatory on the part of the union speakers, the under-
current of veiled menace and defiance was plainly
visible, though these were not directly expressed.
I refer to this meeting because it showed so clearly
the drift of things, and because it was in a line with
the active public interests of Mr. MacVeagh, though
I do not think it was suggested by him. Emily had
little faith in the results of such a conference, but
the peculiar blending of the social and political sides
of life appealed to her curiosity, and she interested
herself accordingly. It was a part of history in the
making. How far the chasm between opposing fac-
tions can be bridged over by meetings on an arti-
ficial basis may be a matter of doubt, but at all
events the experiment had a definite interest as a
landmark in the records of the time.
Later in this same winter Emily had a serious fall
which confined her to her bed for several weeks. It
came at an unfortunate time, as she had cards out
for a large dinner and reception given for Ambassa-
dor and Mrs. Bryce, who were to spend some days
at her house. With her characteristic courage and
energy she refused to recall the invitations and di-
rected the whole affair from her couch of suffering.
The distinguished guests made their visit and every-
thing was arranged for their pleasure and comfort.
The daily little talks in her room helped to pass the
hours. For the dinner she had an efficient aid in
Mrs. Marshall Field, an old and intimate friend who,
with two or three others, received her guests. The
evening passed without a jarring note, except that
her own gracious presence was greatly missed. The
Ambassador, with his profound insight into Ameri-
can life and his familiarity with the vital questions
which interest us most, was himself an inspiration.
I was struck with his modesty about expressing de-
cisive opinions on great questions which our school-
boys and schoolgirls seem to consider themselves
competent to decide without a moment's hesitation.
In speaking of the intelligence of this country I
expressed surprise and regret that it had developed
no great poets or critics. "But you have your rail-
road presidents," he replied with easy tact.
This certainly was not final nor intended to be
so, but it was suggestive.
In February of this year the MacVeaghs went to
Washington. The interesting details of their visit are
best given in Emily's own words.
"February 15, 1907.
"My dear friend: Our visit will be over in two or
three days and but for a miserable coughing cold
that I took in the sleeping car coming and that has
grown worse until now when we are refusing all
evening things because they mean low gowns of
course our stay here would have been perfect, our
friends having done so much for us. I am not sure
that I told you several had telegraphed us invitations
before we left home.
"Our first dinner was at Mrs. Hope Slater's her-
self, her company, her dinner and her house equally
brilliant. Senator Foraker took me in to dinner and
I sat the next woman to Mrs. Slater. Next day we
went to Abby Eddy's everything very dainty and
exquisite charming company, including Josephine
Houghteling Canfield, formerly of Chicago. She has
lost none of her wit or wisdom, and it was delightful
to see her again. Then we dined Friday at Mrs.
Warder's professional dancing to amuse us after-
wards. Saturday we attended the official dinner
given by Attorney General and Mrs. Bonaparte
(friends of ours for eighteen years) to the Chief
Justice and other Justices twenty-six in all grace-
fulness pervading everything. Then Mrs. Leiter gave
us a luncheon of thirty guests music afterwards.
Yesterday, Mrs. Cabot Lodge of Massachusetts,
other old friends; Sunday at the William Slaters'
going afterwards to see the Johnston collection of
pictures, celebrated as you know.
"The only thing I missed last week that I regret-
ted was the reception to the Army and Navy at the
White House, to which the President and Mrs. Roose-
velt invited us. But Frank thought I was going into
pneumonia and wouldn't let me go or go himself.
However, we are to take luncheon with them at the
White House today, so I am still in luck. Tomorrow
Mrs. Patterson has us, and Admiral and Mrs. Cowles
on Sunday; the latter is a sister of the President's,
and an old friend who showed us every attention
when she was with her brother, the first secretary of
legation in London while Mr. Bayard was ambassa-
dor there.
"This is a scrawl only to communicate with you.
Nothing else is possible in such crowded days. I am
seeing too many others to mention my dear friend,
Miss Scidmore, Mrs. Hosmer, Carrie Williams, Delia
Field. I shall have so much to tell you out of this
mere summary."
I had been asked to spend two or three weeks at
Knollwood this summer of 1907, and on July seven-
teenth Emily wrote me, giving specific directions as
to my route and adding the few lines that follow:
"On Saturday afternoons the Dublin Club gives
entertainments. They used to have a fifteen-minute
paper this year the time is extended to thirty min-
utes. I am commissioned by the committee to ask
if you will read your paper on Anatole France August
thirtieth. The remainder of the afternoon is to be
devoted to a reception to Joe Smith, who returns
August second from a winter in Egypt and Italy."
It was Emily who, as chairman of the committee,
had first suggested these entertainments, which gave
an intellectual flavor to the social meetings of the
club. Many interesting speakers and writers appear-
ed there. Among them were Colonel T. W. Higgin-
son; Mr. Basil King, the novelist; "Mark Twain";
Professor Richards of Harvard; Mr. Henderson, an
historical writer; Mr. Pumpelly, who talked of his
explorations in Central Asia; Professor Schofield of
Harvard, a brilliant scholar and student of compara-
tive literature; Mr. Joseph Linden Smith, the artist,
whose witty talks always insured a large audience;
Professor Laughlin, of the University of Chicago,
who spoke on economic questions; Mr. MacVeagh,
who discussed industrial problems; and many others,
literary, artistic, scientific, and sociological. These
affairs were a source of great pleasure to the summer
colony, as they were varied and interesting. My
little paper was duly read, at an earlier date than
was first set, and pleasantly appreciated.
This summer Mrs. Neville, an old schoolmate of
Emily's, visited her while I was there. I had known
her in youth as Ella Hoes, and the meeting across a
lifetime was a pleasant one. An extract from a letter
which she wrote to Emily from New Haven may be
of interest here.
"Wandering about the streets of the old city, with
their familiar buildings looking just the same, even
going into Grove Hall, having a look at the reception
room where you entertained your frequent visitors
you were always the most popular of the girls and
at the dining-room which had shrunk and shriveled
from my memory of it, and our old room oh, how it
brought back the past when you were so good to me.
I felt that I must write and thank you.
"When I stood in our corner room I recalled your
lul]
struggle and perseverance in making me read your
daily New York paper and The Princess do you
remember? I wonder what I would have been had
you not taken me in hand when so young only four-
teen ! With such training I ought to have amounted
to something and grieve that it has not been more."
Shortly after I left, later in the season, came a
letter which will speak for itself.
"August 29, 1907.
"My dear friend: There are too many things I
wish to say for one letter, but, while the matter is
fresh in my mind, shall I tell you about James Kid-
der's luncheon which he gave to Prince Wilhelm of
Sweden, Tuesday noon at the Somerset Club in
Boston? Jim invited Boston's smartest (including
four girls) to the extent of twenty-six covers. Peo-
ple flocked in from their various country-seats in
fine form and fine spirits and everything went off
genially from the start. The table was laid with
lilies of the valley and feathery ferns. It pleased the
Prince. He said to me, ' I love the lilies of the valley.
I always run after them when they first appear in
the spring. ' He speaks English easily, with little ac-
cent, and has a clear, good voice. He seems quite
twenty-nine or thirty but is only twenty-three, and
doesn't look in the least like a Swede, having his
mother's brown hair. She is a German, you know.
I saw more or less of her the winter we spent in
Rome when Wayne was American Ambassador. She
was in the same hotel that we were. I saw her again
for a moment in Anacapri in 1904, when we spent a
day with her physician, Doctor Munthe. It was she
who let Eames have bronzes cast from her special
models when he spent the next winter with his uncle
in Rome. But I didn't intend to run off to the Crown
Princess, so I will run back to the son.
"Jim gave me the place of honor between the
Prince and the new Swedish Minister, Baron de Lag-
ercrantz, the Prince taking me into luncheon. Mrs.
Jack Gardner sat on his left. . . .
"Everybody was presented to the Prince formally
before luncheon doing their little courtesies but
afterwards I introduced the girls informally and all
enjoyed this very much. Some dozen of us went
down with him, by invitation, later, on Colonel
Hayden's yacht, to Governor and Mrs. Guild's gar-
den party at Nahant, returning by motors. He dined
that night at Providence going by special train
and attended two more receptions that evening. He
is distinctly of a good sort, does his own thinking and
speaking. He touched no wine at luncheon, but he
does smoke cigarettes rather often.
"I left off here five days ago. It is now after one
o'clock, September third my mother's wedding day,
by the way and the mail is just going, so I will send
this and write backwards next time, there is so much
else to say. Josie Dexter, Professor Lumholtz, and
three men friends of Frank's come Thursday for over
[120]
Sunday. Tomorrow Mrs. Cheney is to be married to
Professor Schofield and going with him to Germany.
We all are full of regret at their going. Friday I am
giving a luncheon to the Ambassador from Germany,
Baron von Sternberg and his wife, as he does not
feel well enough to go to dinners. I have seen a good
deal of the Baroness lately.
"Now, tell me so very much more of your visit.
Dublin is gay, too gay for me. Frank is riding or he
would have sent messages."
A few weeks later Emily visited Mrs. Neville's
daughter in Tuxedo. She was the wife of Mr. Mason,
the principal heir to the large Smith estate. The
letter explains itself:
"Kincraig, Tuxedo Park,
"September 23, 1907.
"My dear friend: I am just leaving this charming
place, that came to the George Masons from their
uncle, Mr. James Henry Smith, you know. It is
delightfully situated above a deep ravine, with fine
green trees on each side, and, below, a dark running
river. The views from everywhere are fascinating
many high hills with beautiful slopes beyond. Lady
Cooper (Mr. Smith's sister) says they are like Scot-
land I say, then Scotland at its best, for it is far
finer to me. The house is a gentleman's house with
many rare things in it.
"I am ready a few minutes before breakfast. We
go directly afterwards to the town house in New
[121]
York where I am going to tell the Masons something
about the tapestries and furniture that I happen to
know.
"You ask when I shall be in Chicago. I hope to
be there the last week in October. The household
will leave Dublin about the twelfth, but I shall stop
in New York. The Eddys and Beveridges are due
there tomorrow. They are coming on the same ship.
Delia is awaiting Abby who goes off with her. Delia
suggests motoring back to Dublin with Abby for a
few days."
[122]
XV
I AM not writing a "Life," or anything in the nature
of one, only a few records of things that came
under my personal observation, so I pass over many
periods which were full of vivid, but less vital or
significant interests. As the years go, one is tempted
to linger over the sunny spots in the past. The say-
ings and doings of those we love take on a fresh in-
terest as we glide faster and faster towards the shad-
ows beyond which we cannot see. Happy those who
can carry the sunshine to the extreme verge! It is
the serious and the light, the sad and the gay, that
I have to chronicle, but it is a life interlaced by a
thousand tendrils with other lives, a private life it
is true, but perhaps the more intensely human that
its energies went into many channels, instead of fol-
lowing a single deep and powerful current.
In the spring of 1908 Emily had another long and
severe illness, and early in the summer was glad to
go to her pleasant country home for rest and quiet.
She had more of her old friends about her than usual,
as two of them had taken houses not far from her
own. They were near enough for much familiar in-
tercourse, but a dark cloud hung over this peaceful
[123]
life in the fatal illness of one of her oldest and dearest
friends, Mrs. Augustus Eddy, who was spending a
part of the summer with her sister, Mrs. Marshall
Field.
Mrs. Eddy, who was the Abby referred to in some
of her letters, had always counted for much in the
gayer social life of Chicago, but fate had laid its
pitiless finger upon her and she was slowly but surely
fading out of the world. She was an attractive wo-
man with great charm of manner and thoughtful con-
sideration for her friends. She loved beautiful things,
was passionately fond of flowers, and interested in
the curiosities which Nature scatters with so lavish
a hand in hidden and solitary places. Her taste was
exquisite and was apparent in all the details of her
home. She liked to design things to add to its at-
tractions, and to the originality of her numerous en-
tertainments. Music, too, she loved, and week after
week when at home she could be seen sitting in
shadow at the back of her box at the Thomas con-
certs, often alone, and always absorbed in the inspir-
ing harmonies. "This is the best thing we have,"
she said, "the one thing I never tire of."
But this summer she had left all these things be-
hind her forever, though perhaps not consciously, as
her friends hoped that her life might be prolonged
for some years. I was staying with Mrs. Field for a
few days while she was there and was constantly
struck with the brave spirit in which she met the
inevitable. Never a word of complaint, not even a
reference to the suffering which we knew was ever
present. Her days passed quietly, with long drives
through the woods and along the borders of the lake,
noting every point of beauty in the peaceful land-
scape, or dropping in for an occasional cup of tea
with a friend, even appearing a few times at an in-
formal dinner, looking so fresh and talking so pleas-
antly that it was impossible to believe that her days
were numbered.
Socially, the summer in Dublin was a delightful
one. There was leisure for conversation in the small
coterie of clever and interesting men and women who
gathered about the luncheon and dinner tables. Mrs.
Field was a charming and gracious hostess, who al-
ways inspired her guests with something of her own
buoyancy of spirit. She loved people and took keen
delight in giving them pleasure. In spite of her own
ill health, Emily kept up the hospitable traditions
of Knollwood, which had been so long a centre for
the social life of the countryside. I shall never forget
the weeks I spent there that summer. She had a fa-
vorite horse which she drove herself and we passed
the mornings in the woods seeking remote and ob-
scure roads where the automobile had not yet in-
truded to disturb the solitudes. We talked of the
past, the future, of life with its unsolvable problems,
of the insufficiency and instability of all things, of
people, of society, of early dreams, of disillusions,
of the numberless memories that crowd upon the
thoughtful mind with a note of interrogation out of
the distant perspective, of the lives that had been
lived, of the hearts that had been broken, of the
careers of meteoric brilliancy within our own ken,
of the blank wall looming up at the end, beyond which
only the spiritual vision can penetrate all this and
much more, while the leaves rustled overhead and
the birds sang all about us, and no echo from the
clashing world reached us.
Then there were friends perhaps at luncheon and
other friends at dinner, when the talk ran along the
line of current events, or touched upon the last new
book, or lingered among the curious complexities of
social life. If the discussion grew too serious Mr.
MacVeagh lightened everything with a flash of hu-
mor, dissolving controversies in a ripple of laughter.
But one cannot linger forever among the pleas-
ant oases of life. The last evening came. Mrs. Field
and Mr. and Mrs. Eddy were there at dinner, which
was a jolly affair and quite informal. Mrs. Eddy
looked very charming in her beautiful gown of some
gauzy texture, set off with a few rare jewels and the
pearls which suited her so well. She said a great
many clever things that night, but went away early.
I never saw her again. The next morning I left.
She faded slowly, rallying from time to time and
giving hope, but her old home saw her no more. In
the first days of the new year she passed out of the
sight of her friends into the light of the Beyond.
This was the first break in the little circle of
Emily's intimate friends, and the sad close of a long
and tender relation. These friendships do not repeat
themselves in later life. A vacancy left in the ranks
is never filled. The most persistent optimist cannot
quite forget this. The only thing to be done is to
hope for things we cannot see, trust in things we
cannot know, and cherish tenderly those who are
left to us.
[127]
XVI
IN THE spring of 1909 President Taft appointed
Mr. MacVeagh Secretary of the Treasury. This
call to one of the most important positions in the
Cabinet was all the more gratifying that it came
unsought. It was a sudden and unexpected realiza-
tion of the early dreams which he had practically
renounced when he was compelled by ill health to
exchange his chosen profession, the law, for a busi-
ness career. But he had never lost his interest in the
problems of government, or ceased to be a student
of economic and industrial conditions, so that he was
well equipped for the position which came to him as
a fitting crown to his life.
Emily was specially qualified by her wide knowl-
edge of the world, her experience in social affairs,
and her facility of adaptation, for the duties that fall
upon the wife of a cabinet minister. But it involved
leaving the beautiful home into which she had built
so much of her life, with all its old associations, and
installing herself in a new one. With her usual
energy she began at once to look over the situation
and make arrangements for a change of residence in
the fall. The late spring months were spent in Wash-
ington and the summer was passed in Dublin, New
Hampshire, where both gathered strength for the
arduous duties which even then were absorbing them.
The winter of 1910 saw them fairly launched on
their new career. It was my privilege and pleasure
to visit them soon after the first of the year and I
cannot give a better idea of their life in Washington
than by quoting from the letters written by me at
the time.
"Washington, January n, 1910.
"My dear N.: You will be glad to know that my
journey was a very comfortable one, thanks to the
kind friend who placed a drawing-room at my dis-
posal. I rested and meditated in solitude at my ease.
It gives one a curious sense of isolation, this rushing
through the country to all intents and purposes alone.
You almost wish something would happen some-
thing pleasant of course but nothing does.
"I reached here two hours late and found the car-
riage awaiting me at the station. It is quite a drive
to the MacVeagh home, which is on the hill in a
section that was almost uninhabited when I was here
many years ago. The house is modeled after an old
Venetian palace and is in the centre of a group of
fine new residences, mostly occupied by foreign dip-
lomats.
"I found Emily deep in her daily councils with her
secretary, who is familiar with the endless shades and
variations of Washington social life. This is an edu-
cation in itself; it does not come by intuition. But
[129]
woe betide you if you do not know the subtle line
which marks the difference between Mrs. A. and Mrs.
B. No royal princess was ever half so tenacious of
her right of precedence as the woman from the fron-
tier who suddenly finds herself on some unfamiliar
official pinnacle, and is intent upon living up to what
she considers her position and making other people
live down to theirs. If you make a mistake you may
rouse a social cataclysm, or your husband's pet meas-
ure, if he has any, may be lost. Many are the pitfalls
in the path of the wisest of officials. Many are the
qualities needed and one of the greatest of these is
tact, because all the others may be useless without
it and this includes the wife's tact. Happy the
statesman to whom the gods have given a tactful
wife!
"This new life appeals to Emily. She loves its var-
iety and even its duties, which are far from light.
You would be surprised at all she is able to do. Her
energy is inexhaustible. She has fitted up her house
in a distinctive fashion, as she knows so well how to
do. The rare things she gathered for her Chicago
home have a new setting, but they recall the old at-
mosphere. The rugs and tapestries are re-arranged,
the curios disposed of in artistic contrasts. There are
statuettes from Greece, old columns from Rome, with
interesting little stories attached, carved ivories from
the Orient, and crystals of rare perfection in which to
read your fate. She had a new one last fall, so there
[130]
are seven, some of them quite large and of great
value. All these relics of a far past give the rooms an
air of refinement which no upholsterer's art, however
luxurious, can ever furnish.
"But later I will say more. This is only to tell you
that I am safely here in the loveliest of homes, with
the loveliest of hostesses, and that I love you always."
"January 12, 1910.
"My dear N.: Today I have had my introduction
to one phase of Washington life. It is the weekly
reception day of the cabinet ladies and I assisted
Emily, together with Mrs. Dexter, Mrs. John M.
Clark, Mrs. James B. Waller and one or two others.
To be a public servant in a democratic country is no
sinecure. All the world is privileged to intrude upon
your privacy. People you have never seen or heard
of, come alone and in groups to see your house, your
bric-a-brac^ your gowns, and your friends. This is
the penalty of political honors. But there are invis-
ible barriers and these days are, on the whole, agree-
able as well as interesting.
"There were two or three hundred visitors here
today, many charming people of course, and some
who came purely out of curiosity to see what they
could of a life that is new to them. They were from
distant island possessions, from remote frontiers,
from the centres of civilization, all dressed in some
modification of the latest fashion, mostly intelligent,
often college-bred and widely traveled. Many of
[131]
them were wives of the men who largely control the
destinies of this country, others were visitors eager
to see and know everything. Two dusky Hawaiians
were examining the Japanese carvings with the dis-
crimination of connoisseurs, and praising the taste of
the hostess.
"It was a cosmopolitan company and this is the
charm of the life here, though it has its reverse side.
Possibly it is not sufficiently homogeneous. You are
always skimming the surface of things. The inter-
ests are too diverse except in limited coteries, and I
fancy these are outside of official life, which must of
necessity be essentially democratic.
"But everything is rose-colored to me. There is
infinite interest in the diversity. It will be a pleasant
experience to talk over when I get home. Salient
points come out more vividly in perspective."
"January 14, 1910.
"My dear N.: Last night the MacVeaghs gave a
dinner in honor of the President and Mrs. Taft. That
it was a brilliant affair, it is needless to say. There
were twenty-six guests. The table was a dream of
flowers Killarney roses and sweet peas with deli-
cate appointments of daintily wrought silver and
gold, rare porcelain, and historic glass. The com-
pany was a notable one and the shimmer of soft color
in the dress of pretty women added to the glamour
of subtle distinction that hung over it. Among the
guests were Baron Hengelmuller, the Austrian Am-
bassador, and his accomplished wife, a woman of fine
presence, agreeable personality, and the sort of avail-
able intelligence that long contact with the great
world always gives; the French Ambassador and
Madame Jusserand, the first a scholar and eminent
man of letters, as well as a distinguished diplomat,
the latter a woman of great refinement, delicate
tastes, and the simplicity of one to the manner born;
the Japanese Ambassador and his wife, the Baroness
Uchida, a dainty, elegant woman, slender and grace-
ful, a graduate of Bryn Mawr, with a clear, flexible
intellect and perfect command of English an ideal
wife for a diplomat. She is young, but has had two
years' experience in diplomatic life at Vienna, besides
a previous term in China, and this has not spoiled
her natural simplicity and her unconscious naivete.
The Greek minister, who took me out to dinner, is a
charming man of the world, with the soul of a Greek
and the spirit of a Parisian. The mingled romance
and cleverness of Southern Europe were represented
in the Portuguese Minister, who has the ready wit
and the sentiment of his race. It is this blending of
cultured nationalities which gives so distinctive a
tone to Washington society.
"Then there was Mrs. Potter Palmer, with her
beautiful pale face, graceful figure, gracious manners,
and faultless setting, the embodiment of American
efficiency and American spirit, softened and refined
by old-world culture; Robert Lincoln, reflecting the
[133]
glories of his martyred father; Mrs. Dexter, with her
air of breezy worldliness and fresh enthusiasm; Mrs.
Norman Williams, Emily's cousin, who has emerged
from a life of invalidism, and blossomed into a stately,
white-haired woman with much of the delicate, classic
loveliness of her youth. There were others, too, men
and women of clever intellects and agreeable man-
ners, with traditions behind them and some, at least,
with careers before them people representing var-
ious sides of this wonderful American life. I was
specially interested in Mrs. Norton and her clever
young husband, the assistant secretary of the treas-
ury. She is the very agreeable grand-daughter of
William Loyd Garrison, and her father who recently
died was for many years the able editor of the Nation
and one of the few really critical thinkers of the
country. The President has a genial face with a per-
ennial smile, and simple, cordial manners. Mrs. Taft
is unable to go out, so her sister, Mrs. Anderson, a
gracious, silver-haired lady, represented her. I have
heard a great deal about the dullness of official din-
ners, but there was not a dull moment last night.
The conversation was varied, often brilliant, and
always interesting.
"This morning I went with Mr. and Mrs. Waller
and Eames to hear the President's message in reply
to Pinchot read in the House of Representatives.
You would be amazed at the rudeness of this sup-
posedly dignified body. Many deliberately turned
their backs and buried themselves in their morning
papers. Others sat about in groups chatting audibly.
Few listened at all and everybody seemed ready to
yawn. We were told that it was needless to listen,
as they all knew just how they were going to vote,
whatever might be said. Then why read a message
which no one listens to? It seems quite superfluous.
As we could not hear a word in the confusion and
buzz of voices, we left in despair and went into the
supreme court room where the venerable judges, in
the added dignity of voluminous gowns, were listen-
ing to a plea of Senator Foraker in some celebrated
case. There is a great deal in an imposing costume.
It appeals to the imagination. I am sure we shall
get back in time to powdered wigs and scarlet gowns.
They are far more impressive than a simple black
suit, and to be impressive is a long way towards
being convincing. Half the dignity and power of the
Roman Senator lay in the ample drapery of the toga.
Going back to barbarism, is it? Well, I am beginning
to think that reason takes us further in that direction
than imagination, because the greater part of the
world never reasons at all and is only swept on by
the emotions which cling to symbols. But, to return,
the Justices listened with attention, which is more
than the ungowned representatives of a free people
did. Whatever wisdom and insight it may have, evi-
dently our Congress is not a school for good manners.
Perhaps it has a code for itself.
"We lunched at the New Willard and talked things
over. In the afternoon Mrs. Waller drove with Mrs.
Patterson, and I went out with Emily to pay a few
visits. At the White House Mrs. Anderson was re-
ceiving for her sister, Mrs. Taft. Among those we
met there was Miss Mabel Boardman, who was in-
troduced as "the only lady in Washington, really
doing anything." She devotes herself to the Red Cross
Society, you know, of which she is president. I heard
her make a strong plea for it in Chicago. She speaks
directly and to the point, winning favor by her agree-
able personality and charming manners.
"W 7 e met an interesting group at the British Em-
bassy. The main business of life here during the
season, at least for women, is to go and see people,
so you are sure to meet the same ones over and over
again. Mrs. Bryce is a woman of great simplicity
and refinement. I met her in Chicago, together with
her distinguished husband, who knows us as a nation
a great deal better than we know ourselves. It needs
a perspective to judge things or people correctly.
Then he has rare knowledge and insight which give
him a sort of sixth sense that is not common even
among historians. I wonder if he would say the
same things of us today that he did twenty years
ago! The scenes have shifted and everything is
changing. Who knows where a new path is going to
lead? Doing as they like is not turning people into
saints. I am afraid it is much more likely to make
[136]
sinners of them. Of course that is heresy. But we
did not discuss such grave questions. Society, you
know, smiles upon the art of saying nothing grace-
fully.
"In the evening we sat in the lovely drawing-room
and chatted more seriously of people and things.
There is a great deal to talk about here if one is
alive, and Emily is always alive. You see history in
the making and wonder how it will present itself a
hundred years hence."
"Washington, January 15, 1910.
"My dear N. : This morning I had the pleasure of
meeting Mr. Hitchcock, the postmaster general, a
comparatively young man and a bachelor, who is
very much talked of and, I should say, little known.
He has a strong, serious face, and is a man of few
words who evidently thinks a great deal more than
he talks. Indeed, he is a veritable sphynx in his way,
though direct and far-seeing, as well as prompt and
decisive in action. Such men interest you, as you
are always in doubt as to what is behind that reserved
exterior, and piqued because you cannot find out. I
wonder how men in public life dare talk at all, they
are so misjudged and misquoted. I was never more
struck with the wisdom of Talleyrand's saying that
'language was made to conceal thought.' But it is
necessary to know how to use it for that purpose.
It is better to say nothing than too much.
"The conversation this morning, however, ran on
1137]
safe and interesting lines of more or less personal
flavor. The man in public service must have two
lives, one his own, the other the world's. Of these,
the first is the more sincere unless one is theatrically
inclined hence the more interesting. But, in time,
the two get inextricably mixed and the world rarely
discriminates between them. All this is a propos of
the postmaster general with his hidden potentialities,
which only the future will reveal. He has two or
three requisites of a party leader and I don't know
how many more. At least he is elusive, and he makes
extraordinarily safe replies to whatever opinion you
venture to express.
"Later the Wallers left for Chicago, much to my
regret, as they are agreeable and sympathetic people.
In the afternoon I went with Emily to three recep-
tions. Of course you never get much below the sur-
face of any one or any thing, but what is society
except the contact of agreeable surfaces? Where it
is the main business of life there is no time for any-
thing else. As a pageant, or diversion, it is charm-
ing. It is needless to repeat that I am having a
'delicious' time. Isn't that the right adjective for
it?"
"Washington, January 18, 1910.
"My dear N.: The days are astonishingly alike,
with a thousand shades and variations. That is pre-
cisely what life is here, at least socially a matter of
shades and variations. Nothing tremendous happens,
but the difference between Mrs. A's dinner and Mrs.
B's is vital. With the same elegance of appointments,
the same perfection of service, the shading lies in the
composition of the guests. There are brilliant pos-
sibilities here for a genuine society that is much more
than an assemblage of people. Only the divining
spirit is needed. But in a commercial society there
are difficulties.
"We called on Sunday to see a lady who is just
starting for Egypt. Change of scene is required.
The young ladies are inexpressibly bored at the pros-
pect. They have seen it all before. But the little
attaching social threads are to be broken off, perhaps
some growing interest nipped in the bud for the sake
of looking at the familiar sphynx, or climbing the
pyramids, or sailing up the Nile, always in a crowd
of people who are expected in some way to bring a
new sensation into life. This generation is always
moving horizontally it cannot stay long enough
anywhere to go up, or to go down, in search of any-
thing worth while. One gets so tired of the eternally
obvious that is, I do. If other people did they would
stay at home with their thoughts once in a while.
"Pardon this moralizing vein and let me tell you
about an interesting house with enough rare and cur-
ious things in it to stock a museum. We drove there
from the M's. There were a few people chatting over
the tea-table, but we soon left them and went into
a beautiful little chapel with an old Spanish altar
the pictures and carvings taken from Spanish churches,
the work of mediaeval and renaissance artists.
Overhead was a genuine Andrea del Sarto. The soft
light stealing through the tinted glass cast a tender
glow over the old religious paintings, creating an at-
mosphere which tempts one to kneel in reverence as
before something unseen and mystical. The chapel
has not been consecrated, perhaps through some
vague feeling that the spirit of curiosity or frivolity
so often met there might not quite accord with the
reverent spirit of prayer which the altar suggests.
After all, there is not much connection between
prayer and intellectual or artistic analysis.
"I wish I could describe to you the effect of this bit
of mediaeval life set down in the midst of such intense
modernism. There are pictures of various eras and
countries, rare tapestries, exquisitely carved ivories,
curiosities of the Orient, relics of classic times, artis-
tic glories of the Renaissance, a thousand beautiful
things from every clime all crowded into a space
too narrow for an effective setting. One's thoughts
are confused by the variety.
"All this appeals to Emily who, you know, has the
keen instinct of the collector and has brought so
many things from every country to add to the beauty
of her own home. But she never crowds them, and
each bit of exquisite carving or color stands out in
stronger relief for its ampler space and setting. This
also gives a finer sense of harmony and repose.
[ 140]
'Yesterday there was to be a reception at the
Swedish Minister's, but it was deferred on account
of the sudden death of one of the diplomats. In the
evening there was a brilliant affair at the Hays-
Hammonds' of South African fame, then a reception
at Miss Boardman's for the governors, senators, and
other officials interested in the conservation of re-
sources. It was an important occasion, far-reaching
in its scope, but it poured so that we decided to stay
at home and pass a quiet evening by ourselves. A
little pause in the rush is refreshing. But there really
is no pause. You are always talking about the next
affair or the last one. It is all very delightful
fresh glimpses of life, new perspectives, with really
serious, vital things in the horizon and the outside
of many charming people pardon that over-worked
adjective which means about as much as 'nice,' and
is so conveniently neutral."
"Washington, January 19, 1910.
"My dear N.: Last night we went to the judicial
reception at the White House. It was a brilliant
pageant beautiful women, beautiful gowns, white-
haired men who have lived, young men whose lives
are just beginning a moving mass of light and color
in a historic setting. I stood in the Blue Room, which
was set apart for the presidential party, the cabinet
and their guests, the diplomatic corps, and the judges.
Emily of course was in the receiving line, and was
resplendent in white velvet and jewels. I looked on
and chatted with those I knew, as the people filed
past for two long hours. I could not help thinking
of the noted men and women who have come and
gone through these rooms statesmen and politi-
cians, patriots and schemers, women beautiful and
gracious, women sordid and worldly all passed from
the scene, some looking down from the frames on the
walls, others sunk into oblivion. But one hardly
thinks in such a scene; things come to one in flashes
and pass. You are diverted by a new face, or the
inscrutable eyes of some one whose word may control
thousands of human destinies. After all, the lights,
the music, the trappings, are uppermost. These cast
a glamour over the tremendous seriousness of the
life that underlies them. One does not enjoy a thing
the less because one has glimpses of vast perspectives
behind it.
"It is a pleasure to see Secretary MacVeagh, with
his keen, thoughtful face and cordial smile, moving
about in an atmosphere so congenial to him. The
life here suits him, and the work as well. He has
grown years younger in spite of the strain of his
responsible position. The only fear I have is that he
will wear out before his time, as he gives himself no
rest. He is a man of fine ideals, you know, and so
conscientious in the pursuit of them that he forgets
there are human limitations in the pursuit of any-
thing. The world is full of delicate problems today,
for a man in official life who is struggling with cor-
rupt forces, and trying to infuse into politics a spirit
of integrity which is clearly foreign to it.
"I was tired and slept this morning, but this after-
noon was given to Emily's reception, and the rooms
were crowded many interesting people and many
unusual ones shining with reflected light. After the
throng had passed, a little group gathered about the
tea-table and chatted pleasantly. A clever young
diplomat from southern Europe made the astonish-
ing assertion that we 'have no poetry because we
have no love.' I took issue with him. Compare our
great English poets with those of any southern coun-
try where love is a thing that flames up and goes out!
But the southern races do not understand a love that
is fed from spiritual sources and lasts. When the love
which they call an inspiration goes out, their poets
a la Petrarch make it a thing of the imagination and
burn poetic incense to an ideal. Our great poetry is
not always inspired by love. In the romantic South
there seems to be nothing else worth writing about.
And what a travesty it often is! But, after all, it is
true that poetry does not thrive in our age and cli-
mate. For the same reasons, perhaps, love is no
longer supreme. The imagination that creates the
one, gives life to the other. This atmosphere is cer-
tainly fatal to sentiment which demands more repose.
" But the spirit is not dead. If you think so go and
see St. Gaudens's monument to Mrs. Adams in the
Rock Creek Cemeter. It is marvelous. Infinite
grief in eternal silence. I went alone on a sombre
day when the majestic figure stood out in gray relief
against its bare and wintry setting. The weird fasci-
nation of the impenetrable face held me spellbound
and I turned back again and again, unable to tear
myself away from this unsolved riddle with its mys-
tery of love and death."
"Washington, January 28, 1910.
"My dear N.: I have been doing all sorts of pleas-
ant things since writing you last. They were of the
same order, with shades of difference. The most con-
siderable affair as to numbers was the reception for
the senators. Imagine three thousand people crowd-
ed into rooms that might reasonably hold one thou-
sand, and you have the result. Brilliant, of course,
but so much has to be left to the imagination when
you cannot move. Mrs. Taft has shown admirable
tact this year in arranging the White House Recep-
tions so that people are not packed like sardines.
But democracy complains that it is democracy no
more when five, ten, twenty thousand people the
number to be indefinitely extended cannot occupy
the same space at the same time. What slaves we
are to a catchword that tries to reverse the laws of
nature.
"The MacVeaghs went to New York a few days
ago, for a series of banquets that would have cast
into the shade the feasts of Lucullus. Talk about
republican simplicity! Roman luxury pales in com-
parison.
[H4]
V**
"
" ... ...,,...--': g '-.-.. ': te
"<U ^" ' : v-
"While they were gone I paid a few visits on my
own account. Among other pleasant things I took
luncheon with Mrs. Pullman at the Arlington, where
she is staying. In spite of her illness she looks as
fresh and young as ever.
"Last night the MacVeaghs gave a dinner to Car-
dinal Gibbons, which was a brilliant affair. The Car-
dinal is a typical Roman ecclesiastic of the best order
gracious, cultured, winning, tactful, keenly observ-
ing, and powerful through the concentration of all
his gifts, complex as they are, on a single end. In
appearance he is a small man who gives the impres-
sion of a large one. His clear, penetrating eye seems
to read the secrets of your soul. You instinctively
feel that he was born to influence men and move-
ments through his gentle persuasiveness. The chan-
cellor, his secretary, who came with him, is simpler
and less of the world, but inspired by the same devo-
tion to a great purpose. I talked with him a good
deal, as we found Roman friends in common, and I
was much interested in his attitude towards modern
innovations. It is curious to touch the point of view
of people who seem so remote from the new life, yet
consider themselves at the centre of things. It is
astonishing, too the extent to which they make
themselves the centre of things, while we others
move our centre of gravity so often that we forget
we have any, and I am not sure we have. Every-
thing is on a sliding scale, and now we have a prag-
matic philosophy to suit the philosophy of sliding
scales, which is a convenient theory, as it gives a
certain dignity to our changing ideals. Truth? Ah!
that is another matter.
"But, to return to the dinner. Among the guests
was Mrs. Jack Gardner of Boston a small, fair,
delicate woman with penetrating blue eyes and a
subtle smile that can be winning when she chooses.
With a flexible intellect, keen observation, and the
American genius for adapting means to ends, she
combines the taste of a connoisseur, the passion of
a collector, and the indefatigable zeal of the enthu-
siast. I find her interesting and curiously elusive.
"Then there was the Postmaster General with his
impenetrable face and air of reserved force; the Sec-
retary of the Navy and Mrs. Meyer, the latter with
a distinct air of high breeding a bit cold, perhaps,
and dignified as befits her position; Professor Scho-
field of Harvard who, you will remember, gave the
International course of lectures at Berlin two or three
years ago, and his wife, who was the fascinating
Mrs. Cheney of Boston. She has a lovely country
house near Dublin, where I first met her. As he is
young, brilliant, and handsome, the marriage seems
an ideal one. They are always interesting guests.
Then there was Judge William J. Calhoun, the new
Minister to China, with his clever wife who is so well
known in Chicago.
"But I need not extend the list, which included
statesmen, prelates, scholars, diplomats, women of
fashion and women of intellect, with a sprinkling of
literature to season the talk that ranged from the
gossip of the hour to the highest themes, from spark-
ling repartee to the most serious problems.
"The people were diverse and interesting, but so-
cially everything lies in the blending and proportion.
Here it is the talent of the hostess which counts, and
here Emily shows herself an accomplished woman of
the world. In a country where the social strata di-
vide themselves more and more into lateral sections
with money on top, and intrinsic culture there is a
great deal of veneering, you know buried in some
forgotten stratum below, the mission of the hostess
is to blend various types so as to prevent conversa-
tion from becoming a lost art. The material is here
but it has to be fitted and it is her delight to do this.
Besides, this is not a commercial city. That is why
it is so fascinating."
"Washington, January 31, 1910.
"My dear N.: Yesterday I went to a luncheon at
Miss Scidmore's. You remember her the woman
who has written so well of India, Japan, China, and
the Orient generally. Her house speaks to one, in
every nook and corner, of the mysterious East.
Relics of Oriental art give a distinctive character to
the rooms, which are quite simple. The Japanese
Ambassador and his charming wife added to the
illusion. The company was small but interesting.
[147]
Among others was Frank Millet, the artist. Every
one had some definite purpose in life which gave a
tone of earnestness to the conversation that was not
too serious. Miss Scidmore is herself a woman of
keen vision and broad interests forceful, sincere,
buoyant, and quite apart from the rushing crowd,
though more or less in it. One cannot absorb the
spirit of the Orient without bringing a new note into
conversation, but she had evidently studied it in
modern fashion from the point of view of the observer
rather than as an interpreter of its mysteries.
"After a pleasant chat, enlivened by some curious
anecdotes naively told by the Baroness Uchida, we
took leave and drove to see the lovely Mrs. Beveridge.
She retains all the high-bred charm of Catherine
Eddy, with the added dignity of the young matron.
I don't wonder that Senator Beveridge fell in love
with her. He ought to keep her always on a pedestal
and offer her the rarest incense.
"Another call on a would-be grande dame who has
the pose and the luxurious setting without the qual-
ity, ended a day that was full of interest. People
are like old and new wines. It often takes a con-
noisseur to detect the finest flavor."
But my letters grew personal or ceased, and my
visit, like all pleasant things, drew to an end. On
the last Sunday afternoon I recall an agreeable and
reminiscent talk with Horace White, long-time editor
of the New York Evening Post when the great talent
[148]
of the country was to be found in its pages, but now
retired from active life and devoting himself to a mem-
oir of Senator Trumbull. This takes him through a
stormy period and he is here to consult the records
in the magnificently-housed Congressional Library.
I remember him as a small, dark-eyed, wiry man of
the keenest observation and a marvelous talent for
making talents available a gift in itself, the gift of
success. His comments on the political situation were
concise and to the point. I think he enjoys browsing
in more quiet fields. Senator Beveridge came in later
with his buoyant enthusiasm and magnetic person-
ality, striking a distinctly modern note. I wondered
how his political ambitions would fare between the
Insurgents whom he represents and the Conserva~
tives with whom he cannot quite afford to break.
But he looks the world confidently in the face, firm
in his convictions that he is in the right.
There was a word here and a word there, straws
that pointed the way the political wind was blowing.
Others, too, drifted in from the world of fashion, with
the latest gossip, a fresh bon mot^ and a suggestion of
the "tyranny of clothes." Emily enjoys holding the
threads of various interests, and creating an "atmos-
phere" she likes in the life about her.
But after all it is life that we want, and society
largely reflects that which exists at the moment. It
is an eternal compromise between the ideals that we
cherish and the realities among which we live.
[H9]
XVII
I HAVE already spoken of Emily's passion for de-
signing and furnishing houses. It was a way she
had of expressing herself. In her new position her
vivid imagination saw great possibilities of realizing
her dream of a modern salon. But first she would
have a suitable setting. While she felt the need of a
house better adapted to the social duties of her hus-
band's official life, she was unwilling to add to his
cares, so the land was bought and the palatial man-
sion begun and completed under her direction before
he knew it was even planned. He saw it rise before
him as the supposed possession of another. It was
a colossal undertaking and Emily's health was un-
certain, but her energy never flagged. Her past
experience had given her a mastery of details that
enabled her, alone and unaided save by architect and
builder, to follow every step of the work on its busi-
ness as well as its artistic side.
This house was the centre of Emily's social activ-
ities during the next two or three years, which marked
the culmination of her crowded and efficient life. I
have a vivid remembrance of the brilliant groups
gathered there on my last visit in the spring of 191 1.
[150]
They included diplomats of world-wide fame, sena-
tors and representatives who stood for the best in
American political life, cabinet ministers with notable
records, men of science, men and women of letters,
artists, and many from the gay world of forms and
amenities who cast a light glamour of fashion over a
serious and cosmopolitan society.
Among the noted guests often met here was the
British Ambassador, Mr. (now Lord) Bryce, whose
clear vision has penetrated to the heart of demo-
cratic institutions and thrown a vivid light on the
great problems that are shaking the world today.
A frequent visitor, too, was the French Ambassador,
M. Jusserand, keen and alert, scholar as well as dip-
lomat, who touched upon literary and political ques-
tions with a Frenchman's ready wit. There were
many others whom I have not the space to name.
Men who denounced each other in no mild terms on
the floor of the Senate, conversed amicably at this
liberal dinner table. A witty lawyer exchanged spicy
badinage with a brilliant journalist. The conservative
joined hands with the radical. The Republican
statesman looked askance at the Democratic poli-
tician and measured wits with him. Women talked
or tempered the talk, as the case might be, and bril-
liancy was not wanting. Literature was touched
lightly in passing. The Moderns sent the Victorians
to preside over Sunday-schools in the provinces, and
the Victorians congratulated the Moderns on having
Sunday-schools as a preparatory discipline when
their jaded senses turned heavenward. All this and
much more they might have said. It was in the air.
The setting was brilliant. The atmosphere was
fragrant with the art of the ages. At intervals the
rich, soft tones of a fine organ sounded through the
rooms, while a distant echo from a second organ far
above floated down the spacious stairways and
hushed for a moment the hum of voices.
These gatherings included a wide range of taste
and talent. They had much of the quality of a liter-
ary salon on democratic lines.
In the spring of 1912 Emily went to Europe for
a much needed change of scene, and for rest from
her absorbing duties. In a letter from Paris dated
June seventh, she writes:
"My dear friend: Franklin wrote you I came
away an invalid after nearly five weeks in my bed-
room, that only a week before sailing we had a pas-
sage on the Titanic, and that when she met her tragic
fate we came on the Kaiser Wilhelm II. ... I
needed the change and to get away from political
excitement, as I was in the midst of it. I may return
with Eames in August; if not then, in October. It
depends upon how my strength revives. I have done
exactly what I needed here, come into new scenes,
which I am enjoying a great deal. Everybody it
seems is offering to entertain us. We have been at
all the functions dinners, luncheons, receptions, at
the American Ambassador's, two charming musicales
and a dinner at Miss Delia Gurnee's, whom you will
remember and who is extremely grande dame here;
also by invitation to Grand Opera; and to the Rus-
sian Dancers, equal in popularity to the Opera; to
the Theatre Francais, etc. I stay in by day to go
out at night, but it is so different when you have no
responsibility yourself, no head work. . . .
"I lunched the other day with Mrs. Beach and
Frances Keep, and drove later to Malmaison, that
now has a well-kept garden of the flowers Josephine
loved so much. Napoleon's poor, short, narrow little
iron bed has just been brought here. I forget you
don't like these people. Neither do I very much,
but they both lived tragedy poor things!
"I dined quietly with Mrs. Potter Palmer the other
night. She is looking younger and more beautiful
than ever. I shall be at the Ritz Hotel, London, my
address for June and July. Possibly later we may go
to visit the Andrew Carnegies at Skibo Castle in
Scotland."
This period she often spoke of as "the summer of
her life." She had already been presented at court
during the reign of King Edward VII. This year
she had another presentation at the court of King
George V, of which she sent a long and interesting
account, dwelling upon the simple personalities of
the King and Queen. She was also invited to the
State Ball, where she was given a place of honor.
[153]
In a letter dated July eleventh, she writes:
"My dear friend: I was delighted to get your
letter of the eighth and more than delighted that
you are well enough to go about so much. It was
very pleasant to hear of Adelaide's wedding, and
that it passed off so charmingly. I am very happy to
know that you are writing a paper for the Fort-
nightly, as I am sure you must feel much stronger
to do this.
"As for myself I think you are quite right in say-
ing that I have not been resting, but simply having
a change. It has all been very delightful, but very
tiring, and I am still looking forward to the future
for rest. . . .
"The notices you sent about the Presentation are
funny. I sat in the Throne Room both at the Pre-
sentation and at the State Ball. . . .
"Eames has had a great fling in London society.
Single men seem to be in demand everywhere. He
came to London a few days ahead of me to attend
the Hundred Year Ball. I must tell you how beauti-
ful it was some day. Last Sunday he went up the
river with a large party, it being Henley Sunday on
the Thames. It was a hot day, so he and others of
the men got off the boat twice to swim. The second
time, at four o'clock in the afternoon, he collapsed,
caught in an eddy that knocked out his breath. He
had barely time to call once feebly, but it was known
to be a dangerous place and the rescuers are always
at hand. They went out in small boats and saved
him. I have hardly rallied from it yet, for they didn't
bring him home till after midnight.
"Write when you can. I expect to be in Dublin
by the fourth or fifth of August. We are going to the
garden party of the King and Queen at Windsor,
July nineteenth; to a dinner to meet the Prince and
Princess Alexander of Teck the Queen's brother
and to a ball afterwards at the Reids' on the fif-
teenth."
In December of the same year she writes from
Washington:
"Our last official two months are on beginning
fiercely. Mrs. Taft will do everything socially she
has done before. There never has been such beauti-
ful entertaining at the White House and it will be a
long day before any one can take her place there
as a hostess, or his as a host. I love them both
dearly. . . .
"We are both of us looking forward with great
enthusiasm to the last of our work. If my heart
doesn't fail me I shall try hard in the spring to get
back some of my strength and return to the lovely,
peaceful life of the quiet citizen."
In January, 1913, she writes:
"I have greatly enjoyed your illustrated copy of
The Tempest y and think the plates lovely; the re-
edited text I shall have to leave to a less distracted
time. The other night during one of those long night
watches which unfortunately come rather often to
me, I read Billy, and think it a perfect classic. After
Frank finishes it I have promised to lend it to Mrs.
Taft, who is very anxious to see it. She has a pet
canary that she adores.
"These last days of our term are so very full.
Every one seems to want to do something and invi-
tations come piling in three and four for each even-
ing. It is very difficult to get out of things without
confessing you are a wreck. . . .
"Mrs. Grover Cleveland dined here Friday night,
as did her fiance. Professor Preston. I have met
him several times and had a long talk with him. I
liked him very much, and since it is going to make
her happy to marry him I have nothing to say; but
I do wish she could have returned here where she is
so adored and where she would have had a position
similar to Dolly Madison's, although a very different
kind of woman. She seems but little older than when
she was here in the White House is very pretty,
very charming. I sat but one from her at the dinner
the President gave her Saturday evening. As the
different plates came in and the silver that she hadn't
seen since she left the White House with Mr. Cleve-
land, she told us some very funny stories about
them. She also told us which plates were new in her
days, which in the Harrisons'. Afterwards Madame
Cuyp sang, and if you have the chance, you should
go to hear her. She has the second-best contralto in
Europe, so beautiful that when the Queen of Hol-
land heard her she would not allow her own parents
though they were well-born and well-off to bear
the expense of her musical education, but did it
herself. Her training and voice are perfect, and after
the furore created by her concert in New York, the
Metropolitan Opera Company wanted to have her
break her concert engagements to sing for it. This
she refused but is to sing for it in grand opera after
her tour is over in the spring. She is staying now
with the Netherlands' Minister and his wife,
Madame Loudon.
"I hope you had a lovely Christmas. We had, as
it was the first day we have had with Eames since
he came. With very great love,
"EMILY."
It was one of Emily's characteristic qualities to
be faithful to any obligation, in spite of the fact that
it might be beyond her physical strength. She was
resolute against failure under any conditions. In this
spirit she went through all of the numerous social
duties of her husband's last official year in Wash-
ington. If absolutely confined to her room with
acute illness, she called upon her agreeable and effi-
cient friend, Mrs. Marshall Field, to preside at her
dinner table. Now, as always, she was equal to the
demands upon her.
A summer at their country house in Dublin re-
vived her a little, but her strength did not return.
[157]
In a letter dated January 10, 1914, she writes a few
details of her illness and adds:
"I only say this to you hoping you may under-
stand how my miseries of the flesh make me another
being, which I hope will not lose me many friends,
though of course I know it will some. When one
cannot keep up one's own end in life one is soon for-
gotten. I don't complain, as so many clever, delight-
ful and charming women and men come to chat with
me because they know I've lost my health. I believe
there are few capitals in the world so enchanting and
so worth while as Washington if one were only
equal to doing more."
In May, of the same year, she writes:
"I am glad to say that if things go right, I shall
be in Chicago about June first for two weeks. I hope
to be able to reach there a day or two before, but if
I do I shall only let you and my family know of it,
as I have some very important business to attend to,
and must also spend time at the dentist's. 'Work
before pleasure,' as you know, is my precept. When
that is over I hope to see my other friends, although
I am sorry .-to say I am not strong enough to do
very much. . . .
"In looking over some papers yesterday I found a
note of introduction dated May 22, 1906, from you
to your beloved Edith who was then in Berlin. It
was not presented as we failed to go there. Mr.
O'Shaughnessy is now here and it is said that his wife
is expected soon, when I shall take great pleasure in
presenting your letter."
In June the promised visit to Chicago was made
and I saw this dear life-long friend for the last time.
She had not lost her old enthusiasm, but it was tem-
pered. She had always adored intellect and believed
in it as a dominant factor in the best social life, as it
had been in the days of the great French salons where
academicians were made, and genius was petted,
and wit flourished. She still had plans for a literary
salon on modified lines in Washington now that she
was free from the political obligations which inevit-
ably make natural selection on a purely social and
intellectual basis impossible.
This had been her cherished dream and she had
to an eminent degree the qualities of a hostess that
made the success of the old salons. Her facile sym-
pathy, her gracious manners, her wide range of in-
terests, her discrimination in values, made her house
always an attractive centre. She called about her
people of fine distinction in all departments of life,
indeed she has entertained more notable men and
women of both hemispheres than any one I recall.
This fine social instinct was her special gift and will
long be remembered by those who shared her gen-
erous hospitality. But the dream free from limita-
tions, as it pictured itself in her imagination, was
destined to remain a dream and nothing more. She
did not live to realize it. Perhaps it was impossible,
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in any case, to revive the spirit of the past. The con-
ditions that inspired it no longer exist. But it was a
pleasant dream, and no one has so nearly made it a
reality.
A letter from Dublin dated September 5, 1914,
gives a glimpse of her life during the summer:
"My dear friend: I believe you are psychic. The
time you saw me in your dream ill in bed I was very
ill. . . . But I won't go on in this way. I only wish
you to know that I have not been up to doing much
either in the way of pleasure or duty. I have not
been able to motor until about a week back, and I
have gone out but one evening this summer.
"The lectures at the club have been as interesting
as they were at their highest point a few years ago,
but I have lost nearly all of them. I receive on Mon-
days and we have had one or two luncheons and
dinners at home. I have heard some able men who
are very much in the midst of things in Europe, talk
of the inside of the war. We are all greatly disturbed
and taking it very keenly here. It is certainly the
most barbarous war of the world and the Kaiser the
most wanton ruler.
"Eames is here on his second little visit. He spent
a week in Newport between, and there they do not
seem to be feeling in any strained circumstances, for
he went every night to balls and dinner-dances one
where one hundred and fifty sat down to dinner and
two hundred came in for the ball afterwards. Doesn't
[160]
I?
it seem dreadful? It does to me at least. I don't
know whether it helps or hurts one to talk of the
atrocities going on over there, but we are talking
very much here.
"Carrie Williams has made the grounds surround-
ing her place very beautiful. She has about fifteen
acres; one side is given entirely to roads and paths
leading to the front door, and the other side she has
given to graded terraces with beautiful shrubs, plants,
and flowers, done under a good landscape gardener.
"The Charles MacVeaghs are here. Fanny has
just finished her book, but as the man who illus-
trated it is in France with all her plates, and requi-
sitioned into the army, no one can tell when it will
be published unless she publishes it with only three
illustrations. This I think she will not do for the
present, as she has already paid for all his work.
"I am going on with my reminiscences and some
other work for relaxation, but I am not myself doing
good mental work, although I have the most accom-
plished assistance. . . .
'The only mail that goes out before Monday will
go very shortly, so I must say a loving good-bye."
In another dated Dublin, September 30, 1914, she
writes:
"My dear friend: We are all so wrapped up in the
war which seems to be getting hotter and hotter,
that we cannot think of much else. Professor Scho-
field and Frank believe there can be but one out-
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come in the end that Great Britain and France are
sure to win against Germany.
"I suppose you have heard that Delia is safely
back. She is down at the North Shore alone with the
children in Catherine Beveridge's house, very tired
out, although she writes she had a pleasant voyage
over in the Mauretania with very charming people.
But not a word of her own experiences did she relate.
However, she had been in safety for some time at the
Ritz Hotel in London and in the midst of many of
her Field family friends. Of course you know that
Admiral David Beatty is Ethel Field's husband.
"Albertine Drummond has been very ill, but is re-
covering now. Mrs. Dexter andKatharine McCormick
came on the same ship with Delia, but I have not
seen them simply heard.
"I have had a very quiet summer with no guests
in the house of my own except my physician from
Washington, and one or two men friends of Frank-
lin's. Dublin is getting to be too much of a summer
resort for me, but happily I don't have to see many
except on my Mondays, which I regularly keep up.
"Eames is going to live at 1400 this winter. I
don't know what I shall eventually do with the house
certainly I shall not sell it in these poor times.
"I remember with pleasure my month in Chicago
in May and June and the many pleasant things that
were done for me, and especially I remember the de-
lightful visits we had together. . . .
"I hoped to tell you that Frank and I were likely
to come to Chicago to stay possibly until February.
I did not want any one but you to know of it, for I
know how very much I should have to stay in the
house to keep from taking cold. I think society is
going to be so difficult in Washington this winter
and different owing to so many people taking sides
with the diplomats of the different countries, and to
orders coming from those countries that the diplo-
mats must not meet that I felt I would like to get
out of it all, and possibly that I should find myself
strong enough, with care, to stand our cold winter.
But now my physician forbids it. He thinks the risk
too great to take. I shall hope, however, to come out
again in the spring. . . .
"Have you heard anything from the O'Shaugh-
nessys? Somebody told me that they went to Eu-
rope, but I have not heard since.
"I am devotedly yours,
"EMILY."
With the exception, perhaps, of a single brief line,
this was the last letter that Emily ever wrote me.
The projected visit to Chicago was never made. The
plans we talked over in the summer were never real-
ized. She returned to Washington a few weeks later
critically ill, unable to see even her close friends.
With short intervals of rallying she continued to fail
until May 17, 1916, when she peacefully passed away,
serene and uncomplaining to the end.
XVIII
ASIDE from Emily's large executive ability, which
\- showed itself in the arrangement of her do-
mestic and social life, it was not so much what she
did herself as what she helped others to do, that
counted in the world of art and literature. She gave
freely to everything that made for a finer culture.
Her charities were large and her public spirit was
always alive, but her personal favors were likely to
go to people of special gifts who were deserving of
better fortune than fate had bestowed. To those who
served her she was generous and kind. Of a lack of
generosity she was not very tolerant. She was
thoughtful too of friends less fortunate than herself.
If they had any distinction of mind or character,
together with a certain language of good breeding
which is more easily felt than defined, money or the
lack of it did not count with her. Yet she was fully
appreciative of all the beautiful things money can
buy, as well as of the privileges it brings. She loved
her friends with a sort of exclusiveness that made
her a strong partisan, and she had a great deal of the
esprit du corps which is the life of a society or a
coterie. She always preserved the capacity for pas-
sionate admiration and devotion which marked her
childhood. If it sometimes warped her judgment, it
[164]
gave her the impulse to carry to successful conclusion
many things that would otherwise have fallen in the
beginning. Her energy was boundless. She never
stopped at obstacles; indeed, they served to strength-
en her determination and fire her courage, which was
unfailing. Years tempered her enthusiasms a little,
but at bottom she remained the same.
In all her relations she was fortunate. The world
lavished upon her its choicest gifts and gave her the
opportunity to make the most of whatever talents
nature had given her. I once heard her say, before
her greatest sorrow fell upon her, that she had always
found the fullest compensation in life as it went on
from day to day. It was a part of her sunny, optimis-
tic temper to enjoy the passing hour without too much
fear of darker hours to come. She was not intro-
spective, and spent little time in self analysis of any
sort. Her vision was outward, not inward. This may
have been partly because her abounding energies
never left her without an immediate aim. When one
was attained, another took its place. To inevitable suf-
fering she presented a brave face. Nothing daunted
her indomitable courage. In every life, even the
most favored, there are moments of ennui when the
dim consciousness of the insufficiency of all things
comes uppermost, and the outlook is gray with
shadows, but in Emily's these moments were rare
and I think only followed some definite sorrow or
continued ill health.
Her qualities were those of a strong, energetic,
dominant nature tempered by keen sensibilities, large
sympathies, a generous disposition, and a full meas-
ure of the tact that is one of the first of social gifts.
Self-willed and masterful she was, and these qualities
were accented, perhaps, as the years went on, but
they are traits of all forceful characters and did not
make her less lovable. If she was not always quite
just to an adversary, her quick sensibilities, ready
sympathy, and warm temperament, usually saved
her from hardness. If it seemed necessary to be hard
for the moment to carry an important point, a sud-
den impulse in the end would melt away all bitterness
of feeling. She never cherished an enmity.
There was a strong element of romance in her
nature and her vivid imagination was apt to see
things as she would have them. Perhaps no optimist
sees things precisely as they are; a certain glamour
transfigures the hardest facts which is the charm of
being an optimist. Here lies half the joy of living.
In spite of her love of traditions and her taste for
the relics of an artistic past, she was eminently a
woman of her age. Since she could not have the old
distinctions, and did not care for shadows, she wished
to create new ones on present-day lines. She liked
to decorate and beautify the modern. She had the
adaptation, the eye for availability and effect, the
familiarity with classic forms, to do this without los-
ing the mellow atmosphere of age which is fast going
out of the world.
[166!
In all the arts of refined social life she made her-
self distinctly felt wherever she lived. Her house was
always a centre of culture with a perfectly appointed
background of material elegance.
"How I miss Emily MacVeagh!" said an able and
accomplished woman to me not long ago. "She was
the most inspiring woman I have ever known."
Taken as a whole, Emily MacVeagh's life seems
to have been a singularly successful one, not without
clouds as what lite is? but with a minimum of dis-
appointments and a large measure of happiness. It
had unity of aim and opportunity, and it compassed
its most cherished ends.
To be the idol of one's family; to have a congenial
and sympathetic companion; to be brave, affection-
ate, tender, and strong; to prize beautiful things and
be able to command them; to see and know the best
the world can offer; to look with rose-colored glasses
on life that is so often gray and sombre; to love and
be loved much; to realize one's dearest dreams and
fairly attain the things one has most wished for; to
have inspired and blessed many other lives what
more can one ask of a Divinity that rarely scatters
earthly treasures with a lavish hand?
And now, dear friend of a lifetime, farewell. The
book is closed, but its vivid pictures still live, though
I see them today through a mist of tears. Gone is
the sunny, laughing face of childhood, that looked
[167]
out upon the world so eagerly; gone are the dreams of
youth, with the intense joy of living; hushed are the
untiring activities of all the years. The light has
faded from the hopeful eyes. The loving smile has
fled from lips that are cold and silent. But in some
new world beyond the stars, I see fresh perspectives
open, and the soul awakened to finer spiritual issues,
pursuing other dreams to other heights.
168]
PRESS OF THE FAITHORN COMPANY, CHICAGO, U.S.A.
