"As I have informed you, a rule of the Bar excludes any but an English barrister from appearing professionally in the courts. I will not allow a motion to be made that I be heard in the case, for I do not choose to solicit a favor, nor to incur the hazard of a rebuff, nor to expose the American Bar to the incivility which would be involved in rejecting such an application from one of its members. My presence, however, is not without good effect, nor have my services been unimportant. Indeed, I may say to you that already I have rendered inestimable service to my client."
Meanwhile Sir Charles Russell, afterward Lord Chief Justice of England, Mr. Sullivan and Mr. Guy, of the British bar, and Roger A. Pryor, of the American bar, worked faithfully, earnestly, and zealously, step by step, for the unfortunate prisoner. O'Donnell was a poor, ignorant man, who could not write his own name. In this country he had been a teamster in the Federal army during the Civil War. For a long time his countryman who had come so far to help him was not allowed to see him. Finally, this much was granted—and of great comfort to the doomed man were the sympathetic visits of my tender-hearted husband. His trial ended as everybody knew it must. General Pryor felt keenly the embarrassment of his position, but before he left England nearly every club was open to him, and many dinners given in his honor by Lord Russell, members of the bar, Mr. Justin McCarthy and other literary men in London.
"At the royal geographical dinner," he writes, "I sat beside Lord Houghton, and opposite Lord Aberdeen, with both of whom I had pleasant talk. Other eminent men were there. Invitations followed which I must decline, infinitely to my regret, but I cannot neglect the business on which I came. A dinner is offered me in Dublin. Last evening, however, I was glad to dine with Charles Russell, Q.C., and Sunday I drive with him to Richmond. He pays me every possible attention, and I can see relies upon me in the conduct of the case. I live as retired as possible. My clients cannot suspect me of yielding to British blandishments! I have had interesting interviews with my poor client, in compliance with his urgent entreaty. He was very grateful to me and cheered by my presence."
He received marked kindness from Dr. Rae, the Arctic explorer, who had made important discoveries in King William's Land and found traces of Sir John Franklin; also in 1864 had made a telegraphic survey across the Rocky Mountains. Dr. Rae gave several delightful dinners to my husband, inviting him to meet Huxley, Sir John Lubbock, and sundry notable chemists and inventors. "Come to us Saturday at half-past seven," he wrote from Kensington, "a handsome [sic] should bring you in a little over half an hour if the beast is good." At Dr. Rae's he met Mathilde Blind, "a brilliant woman, a Jewess; and Justin McCarthy, a shy, silent man, spectacled and quite like a professor." Dining at the Café Royal, "who should come in and sit opposite to us but the Baroness Burdett-Coutts and her spouse. She is surprisingly juvenile in appearance—not at all as she has been represented. Her voice is quite girlish, and she moves with wonderful agility," etc.
He also met Miss Shaw, who was conducting a bevy of American girls for a tour of European travel. Some contretemps arose which made her grateful for his conduct and assistance. The particular young lady whom he had the honor of escorting and assisting was Miss Stanton. It suddenly occurred to him that this might be the daughter of his old enemy, Edwin M. Stanton. The young lady innocently answered his question affirmatively. She had been the identical baby girl that, eighteen years before, Stanton had held in his arms as he declared, "Pryor shall be hanged!" My general might have done several things: he might have left her alone in a London street to the mercy of ruffians; he might have used, in a dark corner, the tiny pistol he carried; he might have drowned her in the Thames; he might have surprised her by increased devotion and care for her comfort. He chose the last, heaping coals of fire upon her unconscious head!
Before he returned he visited places peculiarly interesting to him as a scholar, all of which he described to me charmingly. As far as in him lay he trod the paths, so sacred to him, once trod by the lumbering feet of the one Englishman he adores above all others, Dr. Sam Johnson: sitting at the desk where he wrote his dictionary and marvelling at the meanness of the desk, looking out of his windows, walking with him and with Boswell along the familiar streets. He also stood on the spot where Blackstone delivered his immortal lectures, and on the very spot where Latimer and Cranmer suffered,—the students at that moment playing near it a vigorous game of football,—all this, and much more, so natural in a scholar visiting for the first time the London of which he knew every spot haunted by the great spirits of the literary world.
After he returned home, he received a long letter from Lord Russell, telling him that he (Russell) had been sharply criticised for the conduct of O'Donnell's case, and accused of having managed it in a negligent and lukewarm manner. He wished his American colleague's candid opinion on the subject, and also requested his photograph, adding, "I am sending you mine."
General Pryor answered him cordially and was glad he could say, "I consider that you defended O'Donnell with the utmost zeal and enthusiasm, and with consummate skill!" It seems the queen's counsel was sensitive as well as able. He was afterwards made Lord Chief Justice of England.
CHAPTER XXXVIII
The circle that finally gathered around the fireside in the little library at 157 Willow Street was long remembered by some of the men who made it brilliant. John G. Saxe, whom we had known in Washington, was one of these men. Thither also came the Southern author, William Gilmore Simms. I remember one evening spent in our tiny library with Mr. Simms, John R. Thompson, and General Charles Jones, when the trio of literary men told stories,—not war stories,—ghost stories. Mr. Thompson recalled a ghost I had known of myself and feared when a child,—the ghost of the University of Virginia that announced its coming by a sudden wind bursting open the doors, passed through the room, and walked off across the lawn to the mountains. His deep foot-tracks could be discerned in the soft sod, and with snow on the ground these deep tracks could be seen to grow under his invisible feet as he strode onward. Well do I remember nights when this ghost "walked." But General Jones had a better story. His was a visible ghost, an old lady, whose contested will he was reading one night, who appeared at the challenged point, looked at him solemnly, and then vanished! Mr. Simms positively declined to mention his own private ghost after these two thrilling visitations.