Arts and Letters

Henry Cabot Lodge, one of the eminent figures of our time, a Senator of the United States from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts for over thirty years and an accomplished man of letters, was born on May 12, 1850 and died on November 9, 1924, in the seventy-fifth year of his age. He was the first occupant of chair No. 39 of this Academy.

Few men in the public life of our nation have been more fortunate in their initial advantages. His parents were wealthy, so that he was free to ignore mere earning power if he chose. In the exclusive circle to which they belonged he learned from childhood to respect intellect and to subordinate the language of mobs to the felicities of pure speech, however caustic. He read with avidity all within his reach and was blessed with a very tenacious memory. His attitude towards life kept him consistently eager-minded all his days, and few obliged to battle for a living have worked harder or with greater zest than he.

The record of his scholarly preparation reads like a catalogue of ships. A year in Europe after graduating from Harvard College. The Law School and admission to the Bar, but with no intention of practising. A Ph.D. degree with Anglo-Saxon Land Law as a thesis. An assistant editorship of the North American Review followed by an editorship of the International Review. Three years as a lecturer on American history at Harvard. This before he was 30 and in the wake of the avowal: "I had no definite plan, no taste, no aptitude, no mastering passion beckoning me into any particular path. I merely desired to read history and write, if I could."

He was feeling his way. Yet with feet already set in the pathway of two parallel ambitions. Ambitions to which he remained ever constant, and which, though parallel, were advisedly interdependent. He aspired to be a Senator of the United States, and on the way to that goal, whether it proved an ignis fatuus or no, to acquire by practice mastery of the English language both spoken and written as essential to the self-respect of one who hoped to be a statesman.

His only defeats for public office occurred on the threshold of his political career. He was 37 before he was elected to Congress, but meanwhile he utilized assiduously the second string to his bow. To this interval belong various studies in history, his short lives of Alexander Hamilton and Daniel Webster written for the American Statesmen series, the complete works of Hamilton in nine volumes, and The Life and Letters of his own great-grandfather, George Cabot, a former Senator of the United States from Massachusetts. In the preface to the last appear the pious words, "A sentiment of respect for the memory of my great-grandfather and a desire to rescue his name, if possible, from complete oblivion, induced me to undertake the work, of which this volume is the result."

During his six years of service in the national House of Representatives Lodge published his George Washington in two volumes, a History of Boston in the Historic Towns series and his volume Historical and Political Essays. In January 1893 he was elected a Senator of the United States. He was but 43 years old. Tenure of this high office, held continuously until his death, with its accompanying responsibilities and power was the crown of his ambition. There is evidence that he never desired any other. It is known that he refused to become Secretary of State. He found from first to last in the legislation incident to the Senatorship a wide and satisfying field for his alert intelligence, positive convictions, and vigilant patriotism. He was among the first to warn against the dangers of unrestricted immigration, citing the example of Rome:

And where the temples of the Caesars stood
The lean wolf unmolested made her lair.

He fought vigorously for national preparedness, for the fortification of the Panama Canal and the upbuilding of our Army and Navy. Above all, as a member of the Committee on Foreign Affairs he was widely versed in all that concerned our relations abroad, and played an increasingly controlling part for thirty years in the settlement of policy and the drafting of treaties between the United States and foreign countries; notably in the Hay-Pauncefote Treaty and the adjustment of the boundary line between Alaska and Canada.

In those ripe and busy years following his election to the Senate, he found continuously until his death time for the books, and the published addresses and speeches, the first fruits of which were his title-deed to membership in this Academy. Henry Cabot Lodge not only wrote well and graphically and was, especially after middle life, a forceful, finished orator, but was universally recognized as that oft imagined, but in this country hitherto fabulous product, the scholar in politics. In his spontaneous but never failing power of reaching back into memory and so adorning whatever he said or wrote with apt and pregnant illustrations from the concrete wisdom of the past, he had no equal in public life and left no successor. In his posthumous volume The Senate and the League of Nations appears his own admission of this gift in the passage, "For a lover of literature and letters instinctively and almost inevitably thinks of the words of the poet or great prose writer which express better than he can in writing or speaking the idea he is trying to enforce."

The audiences whom he constantly addressed were no greater admirers of this happy faculty than his colleagues at Washington. The scholarly grace of his forensic speeches rivals that which he displayed on more purely literary occasions. Together, for he published most of his speeches and addresses seriatim in book form, they charm by their lucidity and knowledge of the subject presented and by their delightful diction. He was the orator-elect of many special occasions, both political and academic. Within the confines of this brief appreciation there is no space to particularize, but titles so varied as Abraham Lincoln, The Value of the Classics, A Great Library, and The Pilgrims of Plymouth testify to his literary versatility. One could cite many passages of distinction, but none more felicitous than his eloquent apostrophe at Symphony Hall, Boston, when his reëlection was at stake in 1911:

I received from my predecessors the great traditions of the Senatorship of Massachusetts as a sacred trust, and they shall remain in my hands or pass from me to my successor unstained, untainted, unimpaired. I would at least have the people of Massachusetts able to say of me that

"I nothing common did or mean
Upon that memorable scene."

I am a Senator of the United States. My first allegiance as an American is to the great nation founded, built up, preserved by heroic sacrifices and untold treasure. My first loyalty is to that bright flag in which the stars glitter and to which we bare our heads in homage as it floats above our soldiers and our sailors, and the sight of which dims our eyes and chokes our throats when we see it in a foreign land.

But I am also a Senator from Massachusetts and that last word touches the chords of memory with tender hand and moves the heart of all to whom it speaks of home. I was born and bred in Massachusetts. I love every inch of the old State, from the rocks of Essex and the glittering sands of the Cape to the fair valley of the Connecticut and the wooded Berkshire hills. Here my people have lived before me since the days of the Massachusetts Bay Company. They lie at rest in the graveyards of Essex, on Boston Common, beneath the shadow of Park St. Church. Here I have lived all my life. Here my dead are buried. Here I hope and pray my children and my children's children will always live and serve the State in peace and war as best they may.

Henry Cabot Lodge's distinguished and unbroken part in our national public affairs is the more remarkable when we recall that he seemed to hold himself aloof from the common run of men. His intimates were but few. To them he was firmly bound for life as with hoops of steel, and to any one whom he cared for or found congenial he was most loyal and sympathetic. But he would have been the last to term himself spontaneously democratic. He was popularly deemed cold, and to many who knew him it seemed that every fibre of his being recoiled,—as indeed it did recoil,—from the promiscuousness of the "glad hand." In his Early Memories (1913) he records, "The society into which I was born and of which I became a part was, aside from politics, in its standards and fashions, essentially English. The Colonial habits of thought, very natural in their proper time, still held sway." That he himself was an aristocrat in his social make-up was obvious. Yet at the same time,—and this was the secret of his success as a leader who for a generation was able on the stump to arouse the enthusiasm of the rank and file and whose word was potent if not law in party conventions,—he was known to be intensively patriotic, especially in his jealous and vigilant guarding of American interests in our dealings with foreigners. It was not necessary to agree with him on all occasions in order to subscribe to this.

To those who knew Lodge well there was no one exactly like him. His conversation, sardonic when he chose, but always stimulating in its vigor and freedom from the commonplace, drew listeners in any company, for his reservoir of apt information never ran dry. He was singularly fortunate in his home surroundings. During his prime his house was the most delightful centre in Washington. His opinions were clear cut and forcible; he never equivocated or shilly-shallied. There is no denying that he was a good hater, but no more so than the majority of his critics.

With one side regarding the matter as unsettled and the other claiming victory, one need not discuss here the merits of the great controversy which focussed national attention on him during the last six years of his life. Too many clouds hang over the arena to permit one to feel too sure which was politically right, but only to remember that the contest was a conflict between two antipodean temperaments. To carry the intensity of conviction into the shadow of the grave may seem vengeful to some, to others merely the purpose of a determined statesman to lay his case before posterity. At all events, whatever individual judgment or sympathies, even his detractors will admit that Henry Cabot Lodge stands among the positive spirits of our Republic and not with the spineless time-servers.

That he could feel so strongly beneath a calm exterior is evidence of vitality. As to the other side, the depth of his capacity for affection and disinterested admiration, another posthumous volume, partly from his pen, is proof eloquent. Lodge's relations with Theodore Roosevelt were known to be preëminent among the friendships of distinguished public men. But it was not until the two volumes of personal correspondence between them was published that more than a few realized the full quality of their intimacy. This especially with respect to Lodge. Throughout Theodore Roosevelt's career he was not merely his closest friend and more completely in his political confidence than any other adviser, but never hesitated to influence him by plain spoken counsel when he differed from him or thought his proposed course prejudicial to his best interests. That Roosevelt was deeply aware of and grateful for this devotion appears time and again in the correspondence. It is easy, to be sure, for one perusing the letters to apply to them the term mutual admiration, even to the extent of quoting the ironic couplet used by Lodge elsewhere:

Ladling butter from their mutual tubs,
Stubbs butters Freeman,
Freeman butters Stubbs.

It is true that they did praise without stint each book or article that the other printed, and were slow to detect a blemish in one another's speeches. But when it came to vital affairs of statesmanship, the application ceases. It is no less easy to discern in these pages the deep-seated fondness of the older for the younger man reveal itself in constant desire that he should do or say nothing to mar his greatness. To one who reads with care this record of unselfish and ever solicitous attachment is one of the bright chronicles of human friendship.