He said: “I promised Switzerland for a friend of Corning’s. He brought him over here yesterday and he is an out-and-out Republican who voted for Blaine, and I shall not appoint him. If you want the place for Winchester, Winchester it is.”
Next day, much to Mr. Bayard’s surprise, the commission was made out.
Mr. Cleveland had a way of sudden fancies to new and sometimes queer people. Many of his appointments were eccentric and fell like bombshells upon the Senate, taking the appointee’s home people completely by surprise.
The recommendation of influential politicians seemed to have little if any weight with him.
There came to Washington from Richmond a gentleman by the name of Keiley, backed by the Virginia delegation for a minor consulship. The President at once fell in love with him.
Mr. Watterson’s Library at “Mansfield”
“Consul be damned,” he said. “He is worth more than that,” and named him Ambassador to Vienna.
It turned out that Mrs. Keiley was a Jewess and would not be received at court. Then he named him Ambassador to Italy, when it appeared that Keiley was an intense Roman Catholic, who had made at least one ultramontane speech, and would be persona non grata at the Quirinal. Then Cleveland dropped him. Meanwhile poor Keiley had closed out bag and baggage at Richmond and was at his wit’s end. After much ado the President was brought to a realizing sense and a place was found for Keiley as consul general and diplomatic agent at Cairo, whither he repaired. At the end of the four years he came to Paris and one day, crossing the Place de la Concorde, he was run over by a truck and killed. He deserved a longer career and a better fate, for he was a man of real capacity.