Under Four Administrations, from Cleveland to Taft / Recollections of Oscar S. Straus ...

by Oscar S. Straus

Our ambassador and his staff of secretaries were at the station in Madrid to meet us. The Roosevelts went to the embassy and we went to the Ritz Hotel. At eleven o'clock on the morning of June 10th, the civil marriage took place in the Prefecture of Police before a district judge. It was a simple proceeding, attended only by the immediate family and a few intimate friends, perhaps a dozen in all. The ceremony was read from a book in which was included the marriage contract. The bride and groom and four witnesses then signed the contract, the witnesses on this occasion being the father of the bride, the father of the groom, and two Spanish noblemen.

The following day at high noon the religious ceremony was performed in the chapel of the British embassy. There were about seventy-five persons present: the diplomatic corps, the Minister of Foreign Affairs and several other Spanish officials, and some friends. After the ceremony, there was a wedding breakfast at the embassy. The Roosevelts left that same evening for Paris, and I did not see them again in Europe.

This was our second visit to Spain. In 1897 my wife and I had been there for about a week, and many of the men with whom we had spent pleasant hours at that time were now no longer living. Chief among these were Sir Henry Drummond Wolff and Signor Castelar. Sir Henry, who was British ambassador to Spain at the time, I had not seen since he was special envoy to Turkey in 1888, and I remember how delighted he was to see us again and how very much at home he made us feel. We also met Lady Wolff then, who, however, was not well. She told us of some of her experiences in Persia; also that Sir Henry was very ill there, having been poisoned at a dinner given by the Shah.

Another colleague of my first Turkish mission whom I had found at Madrid in 1897 was Herr von Radowitz, German ambassador. He invited us to dine one evening at the embassy, and after dinner showed us the throne room in which hung a picture of the Kaiser. Radowitz explained that it was painted by a friend of the Emperor, "somewhat theatrical, you see, but he is fond of appearing grandiose." He started to tell me how he came into possession of the painting, that he had told the Emperor that the embassy had no likeness of him, but he corrected himself by saying: "No, I did not ask for the picture, my wife did." He displayed rather a slighting estimate of his sovereign. The fact was that he was a protégé of Bismarck, and after the latter's retirement Radowitz was transferred from Constantinople to Madrid, which was regarded in the nature of a demotion, and that perhaps largely accounted for his attitude.

As we conversed after dinner, Radowitz made the remark that in 1878 he was one of the secretaries to the Berlin Congress and that there he met Disraeli. Disraeli always made specially prepared speeches in English, which Radowitz took down in French. Then Disraeli would compliment him and say, "Did I really speak in this nice way or did you only write me down so elegantly?" When Radowitz replied, "Yes, this is what you said," Disraeli would say, "So let it stand."

This led me to draw out Sir Henry, who was also present, regarding Disraeli. He had known Disraeli very well. He told me that at the age of twelve he had met Disraeli and had always had access to him. I asked Sir Henry whether he had not kept a diary. He said he had not, but wished that he had. "Dizzy," he said, was not a compromiser; if he had opponents, he recognized them as such and never sought to placate them. When he first entered Parliament he was a brilliant, flowery speaker, so much so that his party, the Conservative, was afraid of him. Afterward, when he became a member of the Ministry, he had trained himself down to a rather prosy level, yet now and again his speech would glow with brilliant passages excoriating his opponent. He was quick at repartee and often held up the other side to ridicule in telling metaphor.

I asked Sir Henry about Dizzy's loyalty to Judaism. He said Dizzy never denied it, holding up especially the race idea. I remarked that in reading such of Disraeli's novels as "Coningsby" and "Tancred," and in the Proceedings of the Berlin Congress, I was impressed with his race loyalty and his purpose to secure equal political rights for the oppressed members of his race in the newly constituted Balkan States.

Sir Henry answered me: "I don't recall the novels, but what you say was true, although of course his loyalty was to England first. Dizzy's idea was that the race should amalgamate."

I wanted to know whether he recollected when Disraeli's novels first came out. He said he remembered all but "Vivian Grey," which Dizzy wrote when he was quite young. He added that Disraeli's writings made him quite a lion among the literary set, but did not help him politically. He wanted to count among the best socially, and ever pointed his political guns toward that target.

When I asked Sir Henry about Disraeli's personal appearance, he said: "Lord Dufferin (Frederic Blackwood) looked very much like him; so much so that he might have been taken for Disraeli's son. Dizzy and Mrs. Blackwood were said to be very good friends. He met her on many of his frequent visits to the home of Lady Blessington, during the period when he was beginning to gain popularity."