The life of John Worth Kern

by Claude G. Bowers

IV

In personal appearance Senator Kern was always slender and never very robust, and in his younger days this was the more noticeable because of his custom of affecting the Prince Albert coat of the period and the high silk hat. Soon after leaving Ann Arbor he permitted his beard to grow to a considerable length and as the political “speaker with the long black beard” he was known through the length and breadth of the state for many years. His height, slender form, black beard, and keen, penetrating dark eyes, an inheritance from his mother, made him in his youth an impressive figure. In later years he abandoned the Prince Albert for a business man’s sack suit, and seldom wore a silk hat except on state occasions. His beard, now gray, was cropped short and little more than covered his chin, but the memory of the flowing beard persisted in the minds of the cartoonists and curbstone wits, and constant reference, which was offensive to him, was made to his beard which differed little from that of Harrison or Fairbanks and was a very modest affair compared to that of Hughes. He never indicated, however, that he cared for the strained witticisms about his beard, and when an acquaintance, presuming upon his friendship, wrote him and suggested that he part with it after his election to the senate he merely wrote that “the beard has been attached to me so long it would be an act of base ingratitude to desert it now.” His eyes, always his finest feature, never lost their luster or fire. He was always perfectly groomed without being noticeably so.

V

In some quarters he had the reputation of being cold and unappreciative, but this was due to his temperamental inability to gush, and he had more of a tendency among men to conceal rather than reveal his affections. No senator was ever served by assistants with greater zeal, fidelity or personal devotion, and yet with one or two exceptions he never by word of mouth in the course of six years gave any expression of his appreciation; and this reticence, together with an apparent coldness, due to preoccupation, was discouraging to them at first. Then during some recess or absence and when many miles away and without any special occasion for it he would write a letter teeming with affectionate appreciation. Perhaps a little later on he would return, and entering the office as though he had just left it, he would sometimes pass by with a scant nod and a faint smile and without pausing for a chat. He had a great heart, but he did not carry it upon his sleeve.

This was shown in his attitude toward members of his family, to whom he was tenderly devoted—he seldom mentioned them even among his intimates. That he kept for and to himself.

And yet, as the old viking, Andrew Furseth, who knew, said few men were more prone to take unto themselves the troubles and sorrows of others. After hearing the pathetic story of the suffering of the wives and children of the striking miners of Colorado, and looking upon the pictures of some of the slaughtered innocents, he sat smoking in silence for a long while, with the saddest expression on his face and in his eyes that I have ever seen. And that was not a pose—there was only one there to see, and Kern was scarcely conscious of his presence. Finally coming out of his revery and observing the presence of another, he smiled rather sadly and remarked, “Well, I guess God reigns and the government at Washington still lives.”

The Kern of the out-of-doors was not the same man as the Kern of the closet, and popular and likeable as the Kern of the out-of-doors was, the Kern of the closet was infinitely the greater—and the real Kern.

VI

As a companion in moments of relaxation Kern had few equals, and no one appreciated this more than his congressional cronies at Congress Hall Hotel, where he made his home during his service in the senate. When he first went to Washington he took up his residence here, but in the fall of 1911 he went to the Arlington, near the White House, feeling that this would encourage him to walk more. But the somber dignity and aloofness of that ancient hostelry soon palled upon him, and a longing for the companionship of his friends soon drove him back to Congress Hall.