So far as I could, I satisfied Sumner's interest about Bismarck, whom I had seen at short range, and with whom, on the evening in question, I had spent some three hours alone. Sumner asked question after question, with one definite object; he wanted to understand the man himself. Once or twice he put a searching interrogatory on matters of diplomacy, or on the relations between the King and his great Minister, which had to be answered with reserve. He showed an astonishing knowledge of purely Prussian politics and even of Prussian politicians. He asked if it was true that Loewe and the other Liberals had owned they were wrong in opposing Bismarck, and when I said yes, exclaimed: "Then they showed more good sense than I expected."
I spent some days with Mr. Sumner in his house in Lafayette Square, in Washington, now part of a Washington hotel. A plainly furnished house, hardly a home; chiefly remarkable for its books and for Sumner. He was a kindly host, anxious that his guest should make the most of his visit, and see the men he wanted to see. I wanted to ask him why he had, on a former visit, advised me not to see Lincoln; but I did not. But Lincoln was now dead and among the giants who survived him Sumner was the most attractive personality.
He became more attractive still some years later, in 1872, when he came to Europe for the rest which his long warfare, first with President Johnson and then with President Grant, had made imperative. He came first to London, staying—or, as the English perversely say, stopping—at Penton's Hotel, St. James's Street; then a hostelry of repute, now extinct. He had a large suite of rooms on the ground floor at the back; gloomy, and intensely respectable. I dined with him the night of his arrival. "I don't know what kind of a dinner they will give us," said Sumner, "but you shall have a bottle of Chateau Lafitte of 1847, and the rest will matter less." He loved good Bordeaux, as all good men do; and his talk flowed like old wine—a full, pure stream, with both flavour and bouquet; and not much of the best claret has both.
It is not possible to repeat much of Sumner's talk, for it was mostly personal and intimate. But I asked him whether he still felt the effects of those coward blows which Preston Brooks had dealt him from behind as he sat imprisoned in his chair in the Senate. He was not sure. He doubted whether he had ever completely recovered, though it was now some sixteen years since that particular piece of South Carolina chivalry had been perpetrated. He thought everything had been done for him which could be done. What he told me may or may not have been printed. I do not know. When the moxa was to be applied to his spine, Dr. Charcot proposed to give him an anæsthetic. "But," said Sumner, "does not the effect you seek to produce—the counter-irritation—depend more or less on the pain the patient would endure without the anæsthetic?" "Yes," Charcot admitted, reluctantly, "it probably does." "Then let us go ahead without ether," said Sumner; and they did. I understood the treatment consisted in laying along the spine cotton-wool soaked in oil and setting fire to it. When, after two or three days, the burn is partly healed, the operation is renewed, and the pain, of course, more severe. But no ether was administered. After his first attack of angina pectoris, "the pain," said Sumner, "which I endured in a single second from one of those spasms was more than all I ever suffered from all the applications of the moxa."
We went together from London by way of Boulogne to Paris, staying two nights at Boulogne at one of the beach hotels. Sumner was like a boy; his sixty-one years sat lightly on him and his interests were as fresh as I had ever known them. He loved the sea and the sea air; an air so much more exhilarating on the southern coast of the Channel than the northern. He was amused to hear that the customs authorities had passed all our luggage—his and mine—because I had told them he was a Senator; and still more amused later when the Dover customs on our return had shown him the same indulgence as "The Honourable Charles Sumner"—honourable denoting in England not political distinction, but membership of a family the head of which is a peer. In Paris, as in London, we had rambled about the book-shops. "I dare say," remarked Sumner, "you thought from my books at home that I cared nothing for books as books; or for bindings. But you will see." And he proceeded to buy a certain number of so-called fine bindings: which, alas, were not so fine as they ought to have been.
Less than two years after his last months in Europe, he died. I have still much to say about him, and there are many letters of his to me which I hope to print; but they are not here and I must end. When I remember what has been said so often of Sumner by men who did not know him or did not like him, I may be allowed to end with a tribute of affection. I thought him, and I shall ever think him, one of the most lovable of men; more than loyal to his friends, delighting in kindnesses to them; of an implacable honesty, sincerity, devotion to duty and to high ideals; an American to whom America has paid high honour, but never yet enough.
CHAPTER XIV
EXPERIENCES AS JOURNALIST DURING THE CIVIL WAR
My obligations to Wendell Phillips are mixed, and one of them was an introduction to The Tribune. In the autumn of 1861 I wanted two things: a holiday, and a chance to see something of the war and the negro question at short range. At that time, Mr. Charles A. Dana was managing editor of The Tribune, with Mr. Sydney Howard Gay as his first lieutenant. Phillips gave me a letter to Mr. Gay, the result of which was that Mr. Dana asked me to go to South Carolina for The Tribune.