FRIEND AND FOE
[Speech of George Augustus Sala at a banquet given in his honor by the Lotos Club, January 10, 1885. The President, Whitelaw Reid, sat at the centre table, having on his right hand the guest of the evening. He said, in welcoming Mr. Sala: "The last time we met here it was my pleasant duty to give your welcome to an old friend. Now you make it my duty—still a pleasant one—to give your welcome to an old enemy. ["Hear! Hear!">[ Yes; an old enemy! We shall get on better with the facts by admitting them at the outset. Our guest was more or less against us in the great struggle twenty years ago in which everybody now wishes to be thought to have been with us. He did not believe this nation would down the slaveholders' rebellion and he did not want it to; and he wrote frankly as he believed and wished. [Laughter.] He never made any disguise about it then or since; and for that, at least, we think the better of him! [Applause.] He came of a slaveholding family; many personal and social influences drew him toward those of our countrymen who were on the wrong side; and now that it is all over, we bear no malice! [Applause.] More than that; we are heartily glad to see him. The statute of limitations runs in his favor; and his old opinions are outlawed. He revisited the country long after the war—and he changed his mind about it. He thought a great deal better of us; and we in turn found his letters a great deal pleasanter reading. We like a man who can change his mind [applause]; and if a bit of international frankness may be permitted in the good-fellowship of this board, perhaps I may venture to add that we particularly like to discover that trait in an Englishman! [Applause and laughter.] We've changed our minds—at least about some things. We've not only forgiven our countrymen; whom our guest used to sympathize with; but we have put—and are getting ready to put—the most of them into office! What we are most anxious about just now is, whether they are going to forgive us! Seriously, gentlemen, we are very glad to see Mr. Sala here again. He was a veteran in the profession in which so many of you are interested, worthily wearing the laurels won in many fields, and enjoying the association, esteem, and trust of a great master whose fame the world holds precious, when the most of us were fledglings. We all know him as a wit, a man of letters, and a man of the world. Some of us have known him also in that pleasanter character of all clubmen described in the old phrase, 'a jolly good fellow.' On the other side of the Atlantic the grasp he gives an American hand is a warm one; and we do not mean that in New York he shall feel away from home. I give you, gentlemen, 'The health and prosperity of George Augustus Sala.'">[
Mr. President and Gentlemen of the Lotos Club: I am under the deepest feeling of gratitude to Mr. Whitelaw Reid for having torn the mask from the face of the stealthy conspirator, for having exposed the wily plotter and insidious libeller, and defied the malignant Copperhead. [Applause.] I thought that I had long ago been choked with that venom; but no, it rises still and poisons all that belongs to his otherwise happy condition. Gentlemen, I am indeed an enemy of the United States. I am he who has come here to requite your hospitalities with unfounded calumny and to bite the hand that has fed me. Unfortunately there are so many hands that have fed me that it will take me from this time until to-morrow morning to bite all the friendly hands.
With regard to events that took place twenty years ago and of which I was an interested spectator, I may say that albeit I was mistaken; but the mistake was partaken of by many hundred thousands of my fellow-countrymen, who had not the courage subsequently to avow that they had been mistaken, but yet set to curry favor with the North by saying that they had always been their friends. The only apology—if apology I should choose to make—would be this: that that which I had to say against you I said while I was in your midst, when I was living at the Brevoort House; and when my letters came weekly back from England; and when it was quite in your power to have ridden me out on a rail or to have inflicted on me any of the ordinary visitations which a malignant Copperhead was supposed to deserve. But you did not do so, and I remember that when I left New York, I had quite as many good, kind, cordial friends on the Union League side as I had on the Democratic side. I would say further that when I came to publish my letters I found that there were many statements which I had made, which seemed to me to have been hasty and inconsiderate, and I did my best to modify them; and I did not wait until I got home to malign the people from whom I had received hospitality.
But I have been indeed an enemy to the United States; so much so that when I came here again in 1879-80 with my wife, the enemy was received on all sides with the greatest kindness and cordiality. So much am I an enemy to the United States, that for years while I was connected with the weekly paper called "The Echo" there was hardly a week when I did not receive scores of letters from Americans from every part of the Union—from down South, from the West, the North, and the East—full of kindly matter and expressions bearing out the idea that I am a friend rather than an enemy to the United States. And I know perfectly well that there is no American who comes to London, be he lawyer, diplomatist, actor, artist, or man of letters, but I am always glad to see him, and always glad to show him, that, although an enemy, I still retain some feelings of gratitude toward my friends in the United States.
I have seen it stated in one of your remarkably versatile and "Graphic" journals that I have boasted of having come here with the idea of making some money in the United States. But bless your hearts and souls, gentlemen of the Lotos Club, I assure you that I have no such idea! [Laughter.] I am really speaking to you seriously when I say that it was by merest accident that upon taking my ticket for Australia, I was told by my energetic manager that I might see a most interesting and picturesque country by crossing the Rocky Mountains and embarking at San Francisco, instead of going by way of the Suez Canal and the Red Sea. I had seen your Rocky Mountains, it is true, but I had seen them in March; and now I shall see them at the end of January, and that is really one of the main purposes of my journey. If from time to time in my passage I do deliver a few incoherent utterances, these utterances will not be prompted by any desire for pelf. That is far from my thoughts, but still if anyone wants to pay two dollars, or seventy-five cents, to hear those incoherent utterances you may be assured that my managers and myself will do our utmost to devote the funds accruing therefrom to purposes of mercy and of charity. [Applause.] I am sure you believe every word that I say; and that Australia is my objective. [Laughter.]
But, seriously, I only conclude by saying that I do not believe a word of what your President has said. He does not believe now that for the past twenty years I have been and am an enemy of the United States. We were blinded, many of us, for the time being; we took a wrong lane for the time, just as many of your tourists and many of your Radicals have taken the wrong lane in England; but I think that differences of opinion should never alter friendships. And when we consider the number of years that have elapsed; when we consider that the wounds which I saw red and gaping and bleeding are now healed, scarcely leaving a scar, I think that the enemy might now be regarded as a friend; and that whatever unkind feelings were begotten in that terrible time should be now buried in the Red Sea of oblivion. [Applause.] There never before was a time when it was so expedient for England to say to America: "Don't quarrel!"
England is surrounded by enemies—by real enemies who hate her. Why? Because she tries to be honest; and she tries to be free. She is hated by Germans; and Germany equally hates the institutions of this country, because she sees the blood and the bone of intelligent Germany coming to the United States and becoming capable citizens, instead of carrying the needle-musket at home. She is hated by France, because France has got a Republic which she calls democratic and social, but which is still a tyranny—and the worst of all tyrannies, because the tyrant is a mob. I do not disguise the fact that we are surrounded by foes of every description; and for that reason and because blood is thicker than water, I say to Americans that, inasmuch as we have atoned for past offences (the Alabama and all other difficulties having been settled), no other difficulty should be permitted to rise; and if there be a place in all the world where real peace may be secured and perfect freedom reign, England and America should there join hands as against all the world in arms. [Applause.]
I have nothing more to say, except to entreat you to pardon my somewhat serious utterances because of the many painful reminiscences which your good-natured sarcasm has brought to my lips, although softened by the kindly and genial terms in which you have received me, and I beg you to accept the grateful expression of my heartfelt gratitude for this glorious reception. [Applause.]