While at Richfield Springs, a few years ago, I drove out to call on Mr. Croker at his farm. I met Mrs. Croker on the piazza and was told I would probably find her husband in the hay-field; so I went around behind the stables and found the leader of Tammany Hall in his shirt-sleeves pitching hay upon a wagon. At that time an exciting political contest was “on,” and New York politicians were continually telegraphing and telephoning their supreme manager,—the only man who could untangle all the hard knots,—yet from his fields Richard Croker conducted the campaign, and with so little trouble to him that it did not keep him from making sure of his hay-crop, by putting it in himself.
In later years I saw much more of Mr. Croker, for I was often his guest at Wantage, his country home in England, and I could not help studying him closely, for he was a most interesting man. In appearance he suggested General Grant; he was of Grant’s stature and build, his close-cropped beard and quiet but observant eyes recalled Grant, and his face, like the great general’s, suggested bulldog courage and tenacity, as well as the high sense of self-reliance that makes a man the leader of his fellow men. Few of his closest associates know more of him than his face expresses, for he is possessed of and by the rarest of all human qualities—that of keeping his opinions to himself. Most political leaders say things which bob up later to torment them, but Croker’s political enemies never have the luck of giving him his own words to eat. He can and does talk freely with men whom he likes and who are not tale-bearers, but he never talks from the judgment seat. Even about ordinary affairs he is too modest and sensible to play Sir Oracle. One day he chanced to be off his guard and gave me a positive opinion on a certain subject; when afterward I recalled it to him he exclaimed: “Marshall, did I tell you that?” It amazed him that he had expressed an opinion.
During one of my visits to Wantage Mr. Croker and I were together almost continually for a week; he not only survived it, but was a most attentive and companionable host. His son Bert was fond of getting up early in the morning to hunt mushrooms, and in order to be awakened he would set an alarm clock. “Early morning” in England and at that season of the year was from three to four o’clock, for dawn comes much earlier than with us. His father did not wish him to arise so early, so he would go softly into Bert’s room and turn off the alarm, to assure a full night sleep for the boy. The fact that he could not hear the alarm worried Bert so greatly that he placed the clock directly over his head, hanging it to a string from the ceiling. But even in this position Mr. Croker succeeded in manipulating it, and he gleefully told me of it at the time.
One day, in London, Mr. Croker called for me and took me to see Mr. Depew, who had recently arrived. We drove to the Savoy and found Mr. Depew on the steps, just starting for Paris. He exclaimed:
“Hello? What are you two fellows doing together?—fixing up the election?”
This was just before Van Wyck was elected mayor; Mr. Strong’s enforcement of the liquor law had been so vigorous as to enrage many bibulous voters. As he bade us good-bye Mr. Depew found time to say to Mr. Croker,
“All your party will have to do will be to hold their hats and catch the votes.”
At the time of the Queen’s Jubilee we were invited to view the procession from Mr. Jefferson Levy’s apartment in Piccadilly, but Mr. Croker declined; he told me afterward that he would have offended many Irish voters in America had he appeared in any way to honor the Queen.
Before starting from London for Wantage one day, Mr. Croker asked me to go to a furniture dealer’s with him; he had some purchases to make. As we entered the place he said to me, “We’ve only half an hour in which to catch the train”—but the way he bought furniture did not make him lose the train. He would say, pointing to a dresser,
“How much is that?”