Recollections of full years

by Helen Herron Taft

Mrs. Wright was a daughter of the famous Admiral Semmes of the Confederate Navy and for some time after the war she travelled with her father in Mexico and abroad, thereby acquiring at an early age a very cosmopolitan outlook. Admiral Semmes was a great linguist and Mrs. Wright inherited his gift. She had learned to speak Spanish in her girlhood, so when she arrived in Manila she had only to renew her knowledge of the language. General and Mrs. Wright had with them their daughter Katrina, who was then about fourteen years old, but their two sons, one a naval officer, did not join them in the Philippines until later.

General Wright had, on the whole, the most delightful social qualities of anybody on the Commission. He had a keen sense of humour and could recount a great number of interesting personal experiences with a manner and wit which made him, always, a delightful companion. He was a devotee of pinochle and he instructed the entire party in the game until it was played from one end of the ship to the other. He was slow to anger, very deliberate and kindly in his judgments, and offered at times a decided contrast to his wife who was a little more hasty and not infrequently founded judgments on what he would jocosely criticise as “a woman’s reason.”

Judge Ide was born and bred a Vermonter and had many of the rugged characteristics of the Green Mountain State, not the least among which is a certain indefinable, but peculiarly New England caution. In addition to a large and active law practice in both New Hampshire and Vermont, he had banking connections through which he had gained a better knowledge of business and finance than is possessed by the average lawyer. Moreover, a long term as Chief Justice of Samoa had given him diplomatic experience and a knowledge of the Polynesian races which were to serve him well in his work in the Philippines. As Chief Justice he exercised diplomatic and consular as well as judicial functions, and his position brought him in close relations with the English and German officials of the joint protectorate of the Samoan islands and in constant social contact with the naval officers of many countries whose ships very frequently called at Apia. He was a widower with two young daughters.

These daughters, Anne and Marjorie, or “the two Ide girls” as they were then popularly known, displayed no sign of Puritan ancestry or upbringing. They were just remarkably beautiful and altogether charming and delightful. A large part of their girlhood had been spent in Samoa; they were the product of an intermittent, but very picturesque education, and there was ingrained in them some of that happy-go-lucky attitude toward life, and that freedom from useless convention which the Occidental is not unlikely to acquire in the Orient.

These girls had, in Samoa, been great friends of Robert Louis Stevenson. Anne, the elder, was the especial favourite of the beauty-loving invalid and he willed to her his birthday, as can be learned from his Samoan letters. She was born near Christmas time and had never known what it was to have her birthday celebrated, a great deprivation in childhood. But she now celebrates as her own the birthday of Robert Louis Stevenson and it is, I believe, her most cherished possession.

Marjorie, whose career, ever since our first trip together, I have followed with the greatest affection and interest, had even more of the care-free attitude than Anne. She used to convulse us with cruelly funny accounts of her adventures with admirers, of whom there were many, and with descriptions of some of the strange acquaintances she made during her travels with her father.

Among the passengers on the Hancock was Dr. Kneedler, an army surgeon, with his wife and two little girls. These little girls were exceedingly bright and inquisitive. Young ladies and gentlemen had particular and irresistible attractions for them and the Ide young ladies kept them very much occupied. The Ide young ladies didn’t encourage their attentions and this fact engendered their hostility. They therefore referred to the Misses Ide as “them there Ides.” With their delightful sense of humour the Ides, of course, rejoiced in the designation and in all the thirteen years since then they have never met Mr. Taft or me without presenting themselves as “them there Ides.”

The Misses Ide were destined to be the unrivalled belles of Manila society for six years and then to move on to broader social spheres. Anne was married to Mr. Bourke Cochran shortly after her father left the Philippines, but Marjorie continued to be her father’s companion for several years, going with him to Madrid when he was appointed Minister to Spain and presiding over the American Legation there until she married Mr. Shane Leslie and went to London to live.

General Wright, Judge Ide and Mr. Taft were the lawyers on the Commission and it was felt that their familiarity with law and governmental matters greatly enhanced the strength and preparedness of the Commission for the work they had to do.

Mr. Worcester was an assistant professor at the University of Michigan. He too was a Vermonter, with quite as much fortiter in re, but with somewhat less of the suaviter in modo than Judge Ide inherently had, or had acquired in his Samoan experience.