Chapter 29

CHAPTER VIII.—IN WHICH WE TAKE SUPPER WITH THE FIRST C�SAR OF THE CORPORATIONS

THE next day, on the steps of the Capitol, I met the Hon. Bonaparte Squares, a large, portly, handsome man with a deep, musical voice and a brown mustache and goatee, He seized my hand and shook it warmly.

“Old man,” he said, “I’ve been looking for you ever since we parted at Niagara Falls. I heard you were here, and I want to have a talk with you.”

I went aside with him.

“First,” he added, “I want to pay you that fifty dollars with interest to date. I couldn’t find you after the tight-rope performance or I should have paid you then.”

“Give me the principal, never mind the interest,” I said.

“I insist,” said he. “Here are seventy-five dollars. Please forgive me—the thing had slipped my mind.”

I took only the fifty dollars, and asked how he had prospered.

“Oh, I’m getting along,” said he. “I have a good law practice in New York and a house on Fifth Avenue. When you go to New York, if I’m there, please look me up.”

I left Bony, for the gentleman was climbing the steps and we had much to do.

It was the middle of February, 1868. McCarthy was on some of the most important committees, including Ways and Means and Railroads, and had got his head above the crowd. Suddenly he was called to New York by the Commodore.

“Come to my house at 5.30 to-morrow,” the telegram said.

McCarthy wanted me to go with him, and I went. On the way down he told me that any day he was likely to be served with papers in a suit by the talented young lady.

“So far they’ve done nothing but threaten,” said he. “It may be it’s only a bluff—an effort to scare me. I wish they’d act if they’re going to. Have you said anything to Sarah about this?”

“Not a word,” was my answer.

“Don’t,” said the gentleman. “Above all, don’t let her know that I love her. If she gets a suitable offer she ought to accept it.”

“I have reason to believe that she is fond of you.”

His lips trembled when he turned to me and said: “Heron, if I knew that, I should be the happiest of men. But, you know, these are her best days. She ought not to wait for me.”

We rode part of the way over steel rails at fifty miles an hour in a new “parlor-car,” which the road was trying, with a small buffet at the front, and where we could be served with fruit and sandwiches and tea and coffee.

We arrived at the Commodore’s ten minutes ahead of time. The first Caesar of the corporations came into the small reception-room to greet us, his straight, columnar form neatly fitted with a frock suit of black broadcloth. His dignified face, his white hair and choker gave him the look of an archbishop.

“Boy, I want to talk with you for five minutes,” he said to McCarthy. “Come up to my room.”

They were gone about half an hour, and on their return a clock on the mantel was striking six.

“Look here, boys,” said the Commodore, “it’s six o’clock; you must come in to supper with us.”

“We’re not dressed for company,” said the gentleman.

“You’re all right,” said Mr. Vanderbilt. “You know where the bath-room is—go right up an’ wash if ye want to.”

In two or three minutes we entered the parlors, and were introduced to a number of people; among whom was the Rev. Doctor Deems. It was a plainly furnished house, as things go now, but comfortable and homelike. The pictures were mostly family portraits, the largest of which was one of the Commodore’s mother. There were models, in gold and silver, of steamships and locomotives on the mantel in the great front parlor. We took our seats at the supper-table.

At his best the Commodore was a playful and kindly man. There had been days when he wore his “railroad look,” and his words were as thunder and lightning, but now he was like a schoolboy. He ate only Spanish mackerel and a small venison steak, and drank a glass of champagne with it, and meanwhile said many droll things which have quite escaped my memory.

“For a man with a war on his hands, you’re very cheerful,” said Doctor Deems.

“Doctor, I never let business interfere with pleasure,” said he. “I’ve reversed the old rule; my home is for comfort and pleasure, and I keep business out of it except when McCarthy comes.”

Supper over, the ladies retired, and cigars were passed to the men, who remained for a smoke with the Commodore. He smoked big cigars, and always said that when he gave up smoking it would be time to give him up.

“What ship is that supposed to be?” the minister asked, looking at the golden model of a ship trimmed with flowers in the centre of the table.

“The Caroline,” said the Commodore. “She was my first ship, and a beauty—brass and mahogany trim, and every comfort—and when she was all ready I gave Delmonico an order for the best dinner he could get up. He served it in her cabin, down the bay, one beautiful afternoon. I had landed at Staten Island, and sent for my dear old mother, and showed her all over the ship. Then I h’isted the flags, and took her into the cabin and sat her down at the table opposite me. There were a number of my friends seated with us. Mother was astonished. She looked around, and says:

“‘Corneel, how the devil did you do it?’”

“Mr. Vanderbilt,” said Doctor Deems, “I’m sorry, but I have to doubt your veracity.”

“What do you mean?” the Commodore demanded.

“Well,” said the Doctor, “when you sit there and tell me that your dear old Christian mother asked a question like that, it casts a doubt on the whole story.”

The Commodore lowered his cigar, and said, with a sad smile:

“You’re right, Doctor, she said it different—no doubt o’ that. I have a miserable habit of swearing. Got it years ago, when my office was the top of a barrel down at the Battery. It seemed to be necessary those days, and sometimes I thought it was a help in the steamboat business, but of course it wasn’t. I ought to be ashamed of it, and I am. I’m like a horse with a hitch in his gait: it’s bad, but you can’t blame the horse so much, after all.”

There was a touch of greatness in his answer, it seemed to me, and gave us all a broader charity for the lion-mouthed men of that day, and God knows there were many of them. A young man who sat with us asked the Commodore if he might quote his answer to Doctor Deems.

“Why, sonny, I haven’t the least objection,” said the Commodore. “Everybody knows that I swear, and they ought to know why, if they don’t.”

He was always very frank in the matter of his faults and vices, and his word for the meanest thing in the world was “sneak.”

“Would you mind telling us the secret of your success?” the young man asked.

“There’s no secret in success, boy,” said the Commodore. “There’s always a secret in failure, but not in success.”

On our way to the St. Nicholas, McCarthy said to me: “To-morrow we’re likely to see one of the greatest battles in history. It’s between the Commodore on one side, and Fisk and his associates on the other.”

“And what’s the prize?” I asked.

“The Erie road,” said the gentleman. “It’s in the hands of wreckers and pirates who are cutting rates, and are likely to make us all kinds of trouble. The Commodore is buying the stock; it will probably be cornered to-morrow. I’m pretty well loaded, and am going to sell everything but my Hudson River and Harlem stock at the opening.”

“I wonder what he wants of more trouble, with all his riches,” I said. “He owns the Harlem, the Hudson River, the Central, the Lake Shore, and a part of the Michigan Southern. Isn’t that enough?”

“But he wants to build up a great, impregnable system,” said McCarthy, “the one we’ve been dreaming about. To be sure, he’s got all the money he wants for himself and his posterity, but he keeps working and striving and building. Don’t you remember that lecture of Mr. Emerson’s, in which he spoke of man’s love of the permanent? It was that love which slowly raised the Egyptian pyramids and the vast cathedrals of Europe. Now it is expressing itself in railroad systems, and tunnels through miles of mountain rock, and bridges over great rivers. We begin a long task, and know well that we shall never live to finish it; yet we strive and worry and suffer for it. Sometimes we give all for its sake, even our honor and our heart’s blood. Like patriotism is our love for the permanent. We must work for those who follow us. It’s God’s will. Now you can understand why Vanderbilt is buying Erie: it’s more rock for his pyramid. He’s the great builder of his time. Drew and Gould and Fisk are destroyers; they’re working for themselves. Vanderbilt is working for America; he ceased to work for himself long ago. He’s Uncle Sam in flesh and blood, that’s who he is—a plain, blunt, terrible fighting-man who leads the army of progress. No angel, but square. He could have robbed the Harlem bondholders, but he made them hang on till they got a profit. Next to Lincoln and Grant, he’s the greatest man of his time.”