DRIFT-WOOD.
THE WILLS OF THE TRIUMVIRATE.
"Nothing so generally strikes the imagination and engages the affections of mankind," says Sir William Blackstone, "as the right of property." Sure it is, that society palpitates whenever a great estate passes to a new owner, disclosing its vastness in the act of transit. Perhaps for this fact we may find another reason in Blackstone, where he says: "There is no foundation in nature why the son should have the right to exclude his fellow creatures from a determinate spot of ground because his father had done so before him, or why the occupier of a particular field or of a jewel, when lying on his death-bed, and no longer able to maintain possession, should be entitled to tell the rest of the world which of them should enjoy it after him." But since the law, to reward thrift and avoid strife, has established this artificial right of disposal, the disparities of fortune, on these signal occasions of transfer, always set us to pondering.
Vanderbilt, last of the three monstrously rich men of New York who have died within three years, furnishes in his will the now tripled evidence of a new ambition in American Crœsuses—an aim to keep their fortunes rolling and greatening for several generations in the exact paths where they were started. Supposing that Mr. Stewart's bequest to Judge Hilton was designed to purchase his entrance into the dry goods firm, we should have a common aim of the triumvirate, since each has put a chosen man into his shoes, as if with the hope to live on in this successor, like Mordecai in "Deronda." The master passion of acquisition is thus striving to outwit death. Astor and Vanderbilt found their second selves in favorite sons; childless Stewart could only take his confidential agent. Each conceivably died in the hope that a successor so carefully selected and endowed would in turn hand over the bulk of his gigantic wealth, in its original channel, to some steward chosen with equal care; so that ages hence the Astor fortune still in houses, the Stewart fortune still in trade, the Vanderbilt fortune still in railways, might flourish under successive guardians, faithful to their tradition and training. The John Jacob, the Cornelius, the Alexander of the past has been blessed with the vision of his millions multiplying as he would have them multiply, and haply has dreamed of accomplishing by his own foresight an entail which he could not create under the laws.
If this be the new tendency that American life is called upon to face, it is at least not hard to account for. The thirst for posthumous fame which inflamed old heroes and poets rages still in days when greatness collects rents, sells dry goods, and corners stocks. And after all, what is there stranger in struggling to prolong after death one's imperious railroad sway, his landlord laws, his massive trade monopolies, than in slaving out one's childless old age in the hard rut of traffic, in order to turn five surplus millions into ten?
To Dives, after a life of accretion, the prospect of frittering his wealth into fragments must be painful. Heirs will waste what he toiled to win. That fortune which grew so great while he rolled it on turns out, after all, but a snowball, to be broken apart and trampled by careless spoilers when he is gone. There are, to be sure, hard-headed philosophers who contemplate coolly the dispersion of their hoard. I remember from boyhood that when somebody rallied Squire Anthony Briggs, of Milldale, on his veteran vigilance in money-getting, saying, "Your children will spend as fast as you have made it," stanch old Tony answered: "If they get as much pleasure from spending my money as I have in making it, they are welcome." But with prodigious fortunes like Astor's and Vanderbilt's, the instinct of accumulation which increases what is already preposterously great may struggle to keep it accumulating after death. When Bishop Timothy sonorously declares from the desk that we brought nothing into this world, neither may we carry anything out, Crœsus in the pew below takes this as a very solemn warning to him—warning to secure betimes the utmost posthumous control of his money that the laws allow. Dombey's soul is not wrapt up in the miser's clutching love of money, but in the money-getting institution of Dombey & Son; and not only in the Dombey & Son of to-day, but the Dombeys & Sons of centuries hence. To found a dry-goods dynasty, a line of railway kings, a house of landed Astors, its owner puts the bulk of his vast wealth into a single hand—in that exegi monumentum spirit common to bard and broker, soldier and salesman. Non omnis moriar, multaque pars mei vitabit Libitinam, the millionaire may then triumphantly say.
On the other hand, the Cornells and Licks of our day, wonderfully numerous, have made America renowned by their public uses of wealth, either in lifetime gift or testamentary bequest; and this devotion of private fortune to the common weal is fostered by the observed independence of each generation in pursuing its own mode of life without regard to the customs of ancestors.
But the testamentary aim of the richest trio that ever lived in America was to escape this national trait of beneficence; to substitute the perpetuity of one's business monopoly or family trade; to struggle against any serious division of the enormous fortune, even at the cost of preferences among equal children; to spare not one dollar out of fifty millions for the public; to heap the gigantic hoard, save what for other legatees propriety demands, on some "chip of the old block" or business "bird of a feather." This purpose also influenced their lives. "Magnificence is the decency of the rich," but little magnificence marked the lives of those three rich New Yorkers. Powerful, self-willed, all-conquering they were, but hardly magnificent. Unprecedented and incredible thing in America, neither Stewart nor Vanderbilt left one poor dollar of his fifty or sixty millions to any municipal or charitable purpose. Filled with his posthumous business plans, neither cared for New York as Girard cared for Philadelphia and Hopkins for Baltimore. True, each of the Gotham triumvirate endowed in life an institution of public beneficence—Astor his library, Vanderbilt his college away in Tennessee, Stewart his hotel for women. It is further true that men who, like Vanderbilt and Stewart, give sure pay for many years to thousands of employees, are benefactors. But to do this, and then to leave besides some testamentary memorial to the city where one has heaped up his wealth, has hitherto been the aim of the rich men of America. Girard not only founded his orphan college, ornament and pride of Philadelphia, but left great sums to beautify and improve the city by removing wooden houses and widening thoroughfares. Stewart, scrupulously just in business dealings, deserves public gratitude as the apostle of "one price," and as the cash-selling reformer who protected prudent folk from the higher prices caused in trade by the allowances for bad debts; but, this apart, in the will of Stewart and the will of Stephen Girard, what a world-wide difference of public spirit! That one act of grace that might have tempered his forgetfulness toward New York—the gift of his picture gallery for public uses—even this act Stewart did not do. The contrast is startling between the bequests of an Astor, a Stewart, a Vanderbilt, and those of a Girard, a Peabody, and a Johns Hopkins.
THE DUEL AND THE NEWSPAPERS.
Barring the two services, doctors used, I fancy, to be the great duellists among professional men. And still, ever and anon, some irascible Sawbones rushes to the ten-paced turf, where, though he be spectacled or pot-bellied, those disadvantages rarely calm his blood-letting rage. But editors are the modern magnates of the code; not because they thirst for gore, but only because the guild of M. Paul de Cassagnac is professionally liable to give offence, and hence to be dragged to the field of glory and to die with boots on. I once saw a statement that the famous fighting editor of the "Pays" had taken part in eighteen duels, "besides having a man to kill next month"; and he was greatly coveted by a Missouri paper that had been losing its writers in street encounters too rapidly for convenience.
The newspapers have emptied their vials of wrath or ridicule upon Mr. Bennett for his duel with young May: now in horror over his resort to the measured ground, and anon in scorn at the bloodless result. Nevertheless, had Mr. Bennett failed to fight that duel, he and his newspaper would have been butts during his lifetime for the shafts of half the editorial archers of the land. A noble refusal to resent the public insult would have been misrepresented with ingenious malice, in the hope to disgrace him and ruin his property. In answer to "Herald" arguments on disputed questions, the unresented cowhiding of its owner would have been paraded by rival sheets. Rarely in business or political controversy would they have failed to taunt him with cowardice. Life would have been a burden to him; and if the consciousness of having refrained in that instance from breaking the laws of man and of God could have saved him from desperation, it would not have been for lack of the sneers of newspapers continually fomenting and reviving public contempt against him. Sometimes a man is goaded by such stings into a second duel, after having been able to resist fighting the first; or else he puts an end to a life which has been made unendurable through constant imputations. Let those who doubt what would have occurred recall the instantaneous newspaper sarcasms, after the street assault, on the question "whether a man is answerable for hereditary tendencies to receive a public cowhiding without resenting it." The satirist who eggs on a duel in that fashion feels justified afterward in invoking public contempt for the man that fights it.
What is the upshot of this comment? That duelling is ever commendable? Most emphatically no. Duelling, branded by the law, is also now so branded in public opinion that it would be waste of words to anathematize it. But what is suggested by the venom of some of the press writers is that they have never put themselves into the place of a man who, with the average sensitiveness to personal affront, and with thorough-going physical courage, had also a clear perception of the remorselessness of his journalistic rivals. From some of them he could expect no more mercy than from the red gentry of the plains. Let those who are sending their arrows into Mr. Bennett ask themselves whether they are wholly sure that in his position, with his family history behind them, they would have done otherwise after the street assault. At any rate, neither duelling nor that cowardly substitute, shooting down an unprepared man who has done some wrong, will be driven out of fashion by bringing newspaper taunts of "showing the white feather" against those who fail to resort to such lawlessness.
THE INDUSTRY OF INTERVIEWERS.
It was a quarrel totally apart from newspaper affairs, as we all know, that carried the editor of the "Herald" to the field of honor at Marydell. Indeed, Mr. Bennett's conduct before and after the duel was so "unjournalistic" that the Philadelphia reporters are said to have sent him a letter, while he tarried in that city, protesting that a gentleman so well aware of the "usages of the profession" ought to submit to be interviewed. But the physician does not always swallow his own drugs. Mr. Bennett, on receiving the missive, remarked that it was "all right," and remained uninterviewed, thus setting an awful example to the community.
A public attack by a man armed with a cowhide upon another not so armed is hardly a feat that excites admiration, while the affair at Marydell was in no sense such reparation for the previous insult as in common parlance to be thought "satisfaction." But one feature of the Bennett-May quarrel not unpleasant to read was the outwitting of the news-gatherers and their resulting desperation. "Had the duel taken place on the Canada border the parties to it could hardly have evaded our extensive arrangements to report it," said one journal after the affair, in a somewhat lugubrious and yet self-vindicating strain. The promptness of Mr. Bennett's movements, and his skill in throwing the reporters off the scent, lest the duel might be stopped, were hard blows to the newspapers. But theirs was no dishonorable defeat—it was one of the fraternity that beat them. Even the device of giving imaginary accounts of the battle in order to draw out the true one was unsuccessful until Mr. Bennett had sailed for Europe.
On the May side there was a trifling gain for the interviewers, but not much. Dr. May, senior, seems to have been condemned to a copious acquaintance with journalists; for, though in knowing Mr. Bennett he had already perhaps known one too many of them, his house appears to have been overrun, after the Fifth avenue assault, with the fraternity, who, in the "strict discharge of professional duty," swarmed multitudinously upon him. At least, one morning the "Tribune" said:
The May mansion in West Nineteenth street was a sealed book to reporters yesterday, and the door was promptly shut in the face of those who were recognized as newspaper inquirers by the negro in charge. Dr. May has made no secret of his anger at the reports, too accurately drawn, of his appearance of anxiety and alarm when expecting bad news from his son, and will have nothing to say to representatives of the press.
Here, it will be observed, is a claim to something professional in the very aspect of the "newspaper inquirer" whereby the sable guardian of the portal may know him well enough to take the responsibility of slamming the door in his face. Again, we observe here a tribute to the interviewer's skill; for, prior to the duel, Dr. May, though politely presenting himself, could give no news; but his lynx-eyed visitors had gathered from the very attitude, tone, and look of their host the material for an item as picturesque as any tidings. So the besieged householder, as we have seen, took refuge in total eclipse, leaving only a "negro in charge" to determine the status of his callers.
Yet the most discerning negro in charge sometimes proves a weak barrier against invasion. The trained interviewer can take a protean shape, and introduce himself under disguise of the most sympathetic friendship or the most urgent business. Sometimes he is the picture of respectful woe, or anon it is he who has a favor to confer by bringing news of pressing importance. Close and private indeed must be that conference whose secrets he cannot worm out. He gave to the public the "family scene of astonishment at the opening of the Vanderbilt will" the very morning after the affair occurred. Should moral borings fail, he can resort to material ones, as when, a few months since, he cut a hole in a hotel floor, to apply his ear to, over the room where a Congressional committee sat in secret session, being detected only by the unlucky plaster falling among the astonished statesmen below. He is the animal of the fable, who, having once "got in," cannot be got out until ready to go. In our war times some commanders looked upon him, coming to camp in never so fair a guise, with the misgivings of the hapless Trojan regarding the wooden horse; and it is said of Baron Von Werther that he "treats as an enemy all newspaper correspondents, even though they have the best personal introductions to him." Such fears of warriors and diplomats, who quail before no ordinary foes, are tributes to the interviewer's prowess.
It must go hard but he gets something from the sullenest and most refractory customer. We have seen his harvests at the May mansion, when baffled by real ignorance on the part of his victim; hence we may guess whether he is to be checked by a mere wilful purpose to conceal, or the whim to keep a matter private. At very worst, his own description of his rebuff will be humorous and piquant. Often do we have an entertaining half column beginning, "Our reporter waited upon," etc., and, after descriptions of household ornaments, personal dress, and so on, ending in this way:
Ques.—You say, then, that you can give me no information whatever?
Ans. (snappishly)—As I have already told you a dozen times, no information whatever.
Ques.—And that is positive and final?
Ans. (savagely)—Positive and final.
Here our reporter took his leave, wishing the gentleman a very good morning, to which politeness of our reporter the uncommunicative gentleman only distantly bowed.
But these defeats form a rare experience of the interviewer, who even then continues to pluck victory (that is to say, an item) out of their jaws. His ordinary career is a round of triumph which has made him a leading figure in the portrait gallery of modern society. I wonder that Mr. Daly does not introduce it at length into some of his comedies of American life. Drawn faithfully, and personated by Mr. James Lewis, the dramatized interviewer would be a wealth of pleasure.
Philip Quilibet.