eldest daughter to the steamer Mary Powell. He did not speak to any of the family but myself during his stay, nor on leaving, except a word or two to my eldest daughter the previous evening, just before supper, when I was obliged to leave them for a few minutes. When we got on board of the boat he sat down by himself, pulled out a copy of the Independent, and read it entirely through, I think, from beginning to end. After a while I joined him. He then showed me the leading article in the Independent which he wanted me to read, saying, "Here is an article by Tilton on Evarts that is wonderfully well done. I should not wish to have written or published it myself, but it ought to be written and published." This he said over twice. Perhaps he was thinking I ought to have it in the Evening Post. Then he took it out of my hands. Before he discovered that I had done with his paper my eye had glanced over a gratuitous attack on Motley and Bancroft. I quietly observed to him that Tilton had contrived to make three or four bitter and formidable enemies by those articles, but I doubted whether he would be indemnified for such a result by the pleasure he would give to others. "Why, yes," said Greeley, "the Herald made its reputation by its attacks upon people." He then spoke of Reverdy Johnson's flirtation with Laird' and the rebellion fomenters in England, denouncing him violently for something he had said or done. He added that Seward was at the bottom of it; it was Seward and not Johnson, for Seward wished to go to England as minister.

It is a common rumor that Greeley is a declared candidate for the English mission; that he would like to have Morgan Secretary of the Treasury, in which case he would transfer his aspirations to the vacant seat in the Senate. It is certain that he ran once for the Senate against Evarts, and both were defeated. All these facts taken together account for his zeal in defending the Independent, which nowadays seems to be conducted in his interest. Here in a short conversation of half an hour, Greeley, though meaning to be reticent and anything but confidential with me, revealed the furious hatred that was raging in his breast against four or five of the most prominent men of our country merely because they have heretofore stood or may hereafter stand in the way of his ambition. He is now prowling around the state every night making speeches to keep himself in evidence. He is as easily flattered as a child. How strange that a man who loves

Builder of the Alabama.

BIGELOW TO HUNTINGTON

231

flattery so much should not treat other people more humanely and should defend such an outrage, on public decency as Tilton's article on Evarts.

Grant and Colfax were elected President and Vice-President, while Griswold, the Republican candidate for Governor of New York, was defeated by Hoffman.

On the 31st of October I received a letter from Henri F. d'Aligny advising me that he was entrusted with a set of medals (gold and silver), which he was instructed to present to me on behalf of the Imperial Commission for services rendered to the International Exposition.

BIGELOW TO HUNTINGTON

Oct. 18, 1868.

My dear Huntington:

Among other gettings, since I last wrote you, we have got a new baby it's a girl - and a new President - he's one of the boys. The girl was two weeks old on Sunday last, and to all intents and purposes an ornament to her sex. She was born on Sunday morning at sunrise precisely. I hope I have at last one child with no prejudices to conquer, against that period of the day, more talked of than seen.

President Grant is one day old this evening. He is expected in Washington next week, when he emerges from the chrsylis (please spell that cussed word for yourself, I can't stop to write it over,) state into which he was begotten by the Nominating Convention, to that of a full winged President. The Cabinet Makers will now take charge of him and supply him for the next six months with all the furniture of that description that he will require. I have nothing new to tell you upon that subject; nor do I think any one else has.

Your Patron Saint H. G. spent the night with me about a week ago and made a speech at a meeting in our village at which I was required to preside. I never was so near to H. G. before and I

had an opportunity of forming more complete impressions about him & verifying others. I like him (between ourselves) less than I think I never saw a man more absorbed with himself and more destitute of any sort of genuine charity for his neighbor, especially if that neighbor could by any possibility be in his way as a candidate for anything nice under the new administration. I could interest you with an account of my observations, but I can't write them out.

Seward made a speech the other day for Grant, after telling me less than a month ago that he should not vote at all. This looks a little as if he might remain in the State Department, the more so as he told me also that on the 4th of March he should leave Washington and go to Mexico and other out of the way places for a couple of years. Providence takes pleasure in disappointing people. Greeley, who loves Seward, says that the Russian Minister told him that Grant could not get Seward out of the State Department with a file of soldiers.

I am at work now in my library pretty regularly but not very hard. This baby bunting business is very interrupting.

Yours very sincerely

[P. S.] Beckwiths all deadly sick of Uncle Sam. I saw Hay the other day, in excellent spirits.

III

DEATH OF BERRYER

Dear Mr. Bigelow:

W1

HUNTINGTON TO BIGELOW

42 RUE DE LABRUYÈRE, 17 Nov., 1868.

*

E HAVE had a momentous coil [sic] over a subscription started the day after All Souls to raise a monument to the memory of the Coup d'Etat and of Baudin, Montagnard member of the Legislative Assembly, who was struck to death by it on a barricade the 3d Dec. 1851. Government got scared and has suppressed the subscription -in which it had provoked finally all sorts of folks to take part. Berryer sent in his contribution with a notable letter of adhesion.1 Paradol's letters on the occasion and one or two other pen cuts by that master of fence I enclose. Old Berryer, Mr. Moreau told me two days ago, is able to ride out - and indeed, yesterday, managed to be taken

Mr. Editor:

'BERRYER TO THE EDITOR OF L'ELECTEUR

PARIS, November 11th, 1868.

The 2d of December 1851 I moved in, and obtained from the national Assembly, convened at the mayoralty of the 10th arrondissment, a decree of forfeiture of Presidential jurisdiction and immunity therefrom, calling on the citizens to resist the violation of law of which the President had rendered himself guilty. This decree was made as public in Paris as was possible. My colleague, Mr. Baudin, energetically obeyed the orders of the Assembly; he was made a victim of those orders, and I feel bound to take part in the subscription started for the erection of an expiatory monument over his tomb. Kindly accept my contribution, and at the same time the expression of my most distinguished consideration.

BERRYER.

233

to Augerville, his country seat - but his case is a serious one and recovery hardly to be expected. Rothschild, the first Jew baron, Harris, and Rossini all died within three days of each other. The newspapers are fallen into anecdotage over them. Here is the best thing I have seen of the banker, illustrative of exclusive respect for business in business hours. Some high-going personage is let by mistake get access to his private office; “take a chair, says the Baron, without looking up from his papers; - High Party somewhat piqued at such lack of ceremony - "you are perhaps not aware that I am the Count of X" - "Oh! well, take two chairs."1

Salm-Salm's book2 on Mexico and Maximilian is not to be sold, I believe, in Paris. There is a new book, not of much volume or value I apprehend, by a Frenchman who edited a newspaper at Orizaba in the Maximilian time. Do you want it? With this go two numbers of your Protestant Bulletin. I don't believe you ever read them and shall stop subscription at the end of the year unless otherwise ordered. When are you going to send for your books at the Consulate? Old Lady Colmache wants to sell some MSS. to American magazine editors. She has one story that, when she told it, I thought capital. If I forward it to you, do try to sell it for her. Bulwer's Talleyrand is just published here in translation. His brother Nedward has at last found a hero in our Teutonico-American actor Bandmann and has cut out his Sea Captain with that histrion at the fore. Papers say the success is handsome quite as much owing to Bandmann as to

Nedward. Reclus' second volume is out.

Wishing you Merry Christmas, enpeptic Thanksgiving, happy New Year and New Baby, I rest, dear Doctor,

Yours truly

'That reply has made the tour of the United States as my friend Joseph H. Choate's best. I leave him and Mr. Rothschild to settle the question of its parentage.

Diary in Mexico by Prince Felix Salm-Salm. The author, the youngest son of one of the oldest families in Germany, served in a military capacity in Prussia, Austria, the United States and Mexico. Captured at Querétaro with Maximilian he was condemned to death. On being pardoned he returned to Europe and to service in the Prussian army, and died of a wound received at the battle of Gravelotte, August 18, 1870.

3E. G. E. Bulwer, the novelist (Lord Lytton).

'D. E. Bandmann, born at Cassel, Germany, in 1840; died at Missoula, Montana, in 1905; acted in Germany, the U. S., and England; in 1868 took the part of Vyvyan (Captain of the privateer Dreadnought) in the performance at the Lyceum Theatre, London, of Lord Lytton's play The Rightful Heir, rewritten from an earlier play by the same author, The Sea Captain.

La Terre.