The next offender was E. P. Brooks, of the New York Times. In a letter from Richmond he spoke rather abusively of Pollard, and Pollard decided to give him a beating. It was not very easy to find him at first, as neither Pollard nor I had ever seen him. After a long hunt I was told that he was in the billiard room at the Spotswood Hotel, and I succeeded in getting a good look at him. Pollard came down immediately, armed to the teeth and flourishing a big cowhide, and, when Brooks came into the lobby of the hotel, accosted him and asked whether he was the Richmond correspondent of the New York Times. Brooks told him that he was, and thereupon Pollard seized him by the collar and began to thrash him soundly. Several persons attempted to interfere, but I kept them off with my pistol until the affair was at an end. Brooks had pulled a handful of hair out of Pollard’s long beard, and Pollard had jammed Brooks’ head through the glass partition in front of the desk, and had given him some hard blows besides. Pollard was not in good society in Richmond, but the Brooks affair was much enjoyed. When I told a drawing-room full of ladies about it, they clapped their hands with joy that the “miserable Yankee” should have been so well thrashed by the Southerner.
The next cloud of war was on account of Mrs. Henningsen, wife of General Henningsen, whom the Examiner had spoken of as a “notorious” character. This was not to be a street fight, but a regular duel according to the “Code.” Pollard placed himself in my hands, and I had a mischievous pleasure in telling him that General Henningsen, who had demanded an apology for the insult offered his wife, was a crack shot, and could hit the spots on a card at fifteen paces with a duelling pistol, nine times out of ten. Pollard told me, in some little trepidation, that he did not believe he could hit a barn door at ten paces, and I warned him that it was high time that he was practicing. Pollard evidently did not hanker after a fight this time, and I succeeded in arranging the matter amicably.
A little later somebody else trod on Pollard’s toes, and he determined to “post” him. Preceded by a negro boy bearing a paste pot and brush and a number of hand bills or posters, denouncing the person to be posted as a liar, coward, and a variety of other things, Pollard marched down Main Street with a double-barrelled shotgun on his shoulder and a huge revolver and bowie-knife in a belt around his waist. There was no fight, and I am not sure that the man who was posted was in Richmond.
I have said that Pollard was a man of loose character, and he was very careless in the statements he made affecting anyone’s reputation if he could, by the publication, make a hit for his paper. Yet, strange to say, he was killed for an offence which he did not commit himself, although he was responsible for it. In 1867, the paper he was managing (the Examiner having died previously) published a flaming account of the elopement of a Miss Grant, of Richmond. It was written up very elaborately, and highly spiced. It was expected that trouble would come of it, but it was not supposed that Pollard would be denied the chance to defend himself. James Grant, the brother of the lady who was the subject of the article in the Examiner, ensconced himself in a room in a house which Pollard passed regularly every morning. It was near his office. As Pollard passed by the window of the room, Grant, who was hidden from sight, shot Pollard down with a double-barrelled gun. He died instantly, and without knowing who killed him. Grant was tried for murder, and was acquitted. The feeling in Richmond was very strong against Grant: not because he had killed Pollard, but because he had not confronted him like a man, and given him a chance for his life. All this was long after I left Richmond.
Mr. Riordan and I were now on very good terms. We slept in one of the rooms at the Examiner office, in which we worked, and took our meals together at Zetelle’s restaurant. I suppose I must have made a good impression upon him, as I find the following in a letter to my mother, dated January 11, 1866: “Our news editor, a gentleman of ten or fifteen years experience in the newspaper business, says that it is impossible that a man of my talent can remain unemployed, and Pollard says he is delighted with my fluency, style and indefatigable energy. Of course, I do not place one particle of reliance in such remarks as these. They are sincere, and I am grateful for them, but these gentlemen cannot make me think so highly of myself as they seem to think of me.” About this time Mr. Riordan, the news editor just mentioned, broached to me a plan for starting a cheap and popular newspaper in Charleston, South Carolina. He said that the Charleston newspapers were very slow and old fashioned, and that there was a fine field for a new and bright paper. This he had thought for a long time, but had not taken any steps to give the project shape, because he had not found the right sort of man to go into it with him. He was pleased to say that I was just the man he was looking for, and that he was quite sure that he and I could make the paper successful. The whole of the details of the prospective newspaper were carefully discussed. It is rather amusing to recall now Riordan’s remark that the local reporting in Charleston need not give us much trouble, as the policemen would drop in and tell us about anything that happened. Another remark of his was about in these words: “Of course you know, Dawson, you could not do the editorial writing, but we could engage a man to do that for us.” Riordan, like myself, had no money, but thought that he had friends who would lend us some; and this was the position of affairs when my connection with the Examiner was suddenly suspended.
[XXXV.]
The Federal officers in Richmond gave several public dancing parties, or “Hops” as they were called, at the different hotels, and desired that the Richmond ladies should attend them. There was, of course, too much feeling against the North at this time to permit anything of the sort, and the only Richmond women who attended these “Hops” were the wives and daughters of the present and prospective office holders under the United States Government. The newspapers were not invited to send reporters to the “Hops,” but the Examiner managed always to have a man there, and gave a highly colored report of them the morning after the occurrence, describing and naming the Richmond people who were there, and dressing up the whole account in a style of mingled bitterness and ridicule. J. Marshall Hanna, the principal local reporter for the Examiner, did most of the work on these reports, and it was he, by the way, who described the elopement of Miss Grant which had so tragical consequences. The Federal officers were indignant at the way in which their efforts at reconciliation were treated by the Examiner, but another “Hop” was announced. This was in March, 1866. We prepared ourselves for a report that should out-Herod Herod. Hanna, Mr. Fred. Daniel, and I were engaged on it, and we called into requisition every apt quotation we could find in French and Italian, as well as in English. The report being finished, I went to a ball to which I had been invited, and did not return to the office until near daylight. At the office door I found a sentry, who halted me and refused to allow me to pass into the building. To my astonishment I then learned that the Federal Commandant at Richmond had taken possession of the Examiner office, and had suspended its publication, on account of the malignant and disloyal reports of the famous Yankee “Hops.” It was with great difficulty that I induced the guard to allow me to go up to my room for more suitable attire. Riordan told me that he was at his desk working quietly on his exchanges, when he heard a dull tramp, tramp in the street, and then tramp, tramp on the stairs, and then tramp, tramp in the outer room, and the command “halt!” and the rattle of muskets on the floor. By this time he began to think that something unusual was happening, and was sure of it when an officer entered the room and told him that he had orders to seize the whole establishment, and that he and everyone else connected with the paper must leave the place at once. This arbitrary and lawless proceeding did not shock me as much as it ought to have done, inasmuch as it held out the promise of a holiday, which I knew I could pass delightfully with my fair friends in Richmond; but the very day that the Examiner was shut up the proprietors of the Richmond Dispatch sent for me, and offered me a salary of $25 a week if I would go on the staff of that paper. Mr. Pollard made no objection, and I went to work at once on the Dispatch. The Examiner remained in possession of the military authorities for about two weeks I think, and was only released when a peremptory order to that end was given by the President himself.
On the Dispatch I was legislative and local reporter, and was handsomely treated. One of my colleagues was Captain J. Innes Randolph, who had played that ’possum trick on me at Bunker Hill, on the retreat from Gettysburg. Randolph was a man of many accomplishments. He played the piano and violin charmingly, was a skillful engineer, a very capable lawyer, and wrote charmingly in both prose and verse. “The Good Old Rebel” is one of his productions, and his lines on the statue of Marshall, which now stands in the Capitol Square, are worth remembering. Randolph is the son of Lieutenant Randolph of the Navy, who tweaked President Jackson’s nose, and has something of his father’s temper. A more cranky and irritable fellow is rarely met with. He lives in Baltimore, and is now on the staff of the American. I have not seen him for several years.