From Pinafores to Politics, by Mrs. J. Borden Harriman
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
From pinafores to politics, by Mrs. J. Borden Harriman EX LIBRIS Carrie Chapman Catt I have six honest serving men, They taught me all I knew, Their names are Why & What & When And how & Where & Who. Kipling. Section XIV No. 22 VIEW OF THE PARK FOUNTAIN AND CITY HALL, NEW YORK From an old print in of Karl Schmidt, Esquire VIEW OF THE PARK FOUNTAIN AND CITY HALL, NEW YORK From an old print in of Karl Schmidt, Esquire LIBRARY CARRIE CHAPMAN CATT SUBJECT No Man NO Mrs. J. Borden Harriman FROM PINAFORES TO POLITICS By MRS. J. BORDEN HARRIMAN NEW YORK HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 1923 Copyright, 1923, By HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY First printing, October, 1923 Printed in the United States of America To ETHEL CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I. Innocence at Home 1 II. Growing Up 19 III. Fuss and Feathers 35 IV. Settling Down 61 V. The Colony Club: An Adventure 72 VI. The Democrats Come Back 98 From pinafores to politics, by Mrs. J. Borden Harriman http://www.loc.gov/resource/rbnawsa.n7479 VII. The Youngest Mayor 117 VIII. Public Service 131 IX. 1941 147 X. More Labor Hearings 165 XI. On the Border 176 XII. The Washington Scene 186 XIII. Washington at War 212 XIV. England in the War 229 XV. France at War 249 XVI. Washington —1918 271 XVII. Paris and the Armistice 288 XVIII. The Peace Conference 302 XIX. Censored Correspondence 326 XX. Looking on at Best Minds 339 XXI. Women in Politics and the Peace Movement 350 ILLUSTRATIONS Mrs. J. Borden Harriman Frontispiece PAGE Edward S. Jaffray 4 Mrs. Edward S. Jaffray 4 From pinafores to politics, by Mrs. J. Borden Harriman http://www.loc.gov/resource/rbnawsa.n7479 Mr. and Mrs. Frank J. Hurst 10 Ethel, Elise, and Daisy Hurst with Their Aunt Florence 10 The Ship “Banshee” 14 Dressed for Riding at the Age of Nine 20 Frank J. Hurst 28 A. J. Hurst 32 Daisy Hurst in Central Park 38 Before a Run with the Meadowbrook Hounds 42 Ladies' Four-in-Hand Driving Club Meet 46 Dinner at Mr. Abram Hewitt's 50 “Fuss and Feathers” 58 Group at Premium Point, New Rochelle 70 Newport Group, 1894 74 Woodrow Wilson Accepting the Democratic Nomination 110 President Wilson and Mayor Mitchel 126 J. Borden Harriman 162 Ludlow Tent Colony 168 The Last Suffrage Parade in New York 202 Ethel Harriman Russell 262 Colonel House 294 From pinafores to politics, by Mrs. J. Borden Harriman http://www.loc.gov/resource/rbnawsa.n7479 President Wilson at the Peace Conference 310 General Pershing Riding Under the Arc de Triomphe 318 “The Big Four” 324 1 FROM PINAFORES TOPOLITICS- CHAPTER IINNOCENCE AT HOME Until I began sorting over my memories, and amusing myself with all the good things, bad things, and silly things that have happened to me in my fifty wonderful years, I thought memoirs ought to be locked in a box, a Pandora's box, labeled “Do not open.” In spite of my pleasure in books like Lord Frederick Hamilton's Vanished Pomps of Yesterday, and Dr. Rainsford's recollections of St. George's Parish, many of the rows of volumes labeled autobiography and memoirs seemed to me monuments to human self-indulgence and vanity. Such folly would never be mine. Then I began remembering “like anything” as the children say, and then I began to tinker with the idea of writing out a notebook for my grandchildren, little Bordie and Howland Russell. Now that the old house I lived in at 615 Fifth Avenue has been torn down, and the great steel bones of a skyscraper rest in the cavern that used to be my grandfather Jaffray's cellar, there must be some way, if it is only with pencil and paper, to give the children a share of the old, old New York and the castle that was an Englishman's home when “Grannie” was a little 2 girl. (You can see how easily I was lost. The children were just my excuses.) I haven't the least illusion in the world that I am an important person. It isn't that sort of vanity that makes me write down what I think about things. It's much more that I have been happy, and sometimes I think people would rather hear about happiness than cleverness. I am no writer and all sorts of people will say I didn't really understand everything that happened to me, but I think nobody can deny that I have always had through sheer luck what T., a lifelong friend, calls a box seat at the America of my times. The first thing I remember at all is a sort of box seat. My mother was holding me up at a window in Brighton, England, so that I could see the Tenth Hussars, giddy in their blue coats riding by in the street below. I beat my hands against the cold window pane and danced on the air. “The Campbells are coming, Hooray, Hooray! The Campbells are coming, Hooray, Hooray!” Even today I get the most marvelous tinkle and tingle down my spine when I hear that tune, and enough memories to make a Durbar romp by in my mind,—Tenth Hussars at Brighton, parades in Egypt, in Bermuda, in London, General Pershing leading the American troops under the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, banquets and celebrations numberless in New York. I suppose this is something which happens to every child. From pinafores to politics, by Mrs. J. Borden Harriman http://www.loc.gov/resource/rbnawsa.n7479 When once a sound has hit a baby's ear as a tune—whatever melody it is—it will ever after have power to stir. It's the same way with the Tenth Hussars. I always notice what happens to them as if they were My Regiment, just because they were my first 3 “jimmie lolos.” My uncle Jimmie was in the Seventh Regiment in New York, and lolo was the best my tongue could do with soldiers. “The Campbells are coming, Jimmie Lolo, Jimmie Lolo.” What I remember next is a big red sofa near a fire-place in our townhouse. There were three little girls, one with moppy, yellow hair. That was me. The most important thing in the world was to sit next, absolutely next Grandpapa, a tall man with hair already white, holding in his lap a bound volume of the London Punch. The little girls squirmed and wriggled into the soft couch, and Papa Eddie, as we called him, set Biddy,—that was my youngest sister Elise,—and Appy Doll (Ethel) and Daisy Paisy which was me, off into chuckles with his tales of “Dizzy,” and Gladstone who figured as a sort of heroic Jack and Giant Killer who lived in a glorious place called London. There were evenings on the red sofa, and there were breakfasts. What is left of my childhood now is a long procession of breakfasts, Grandpapa a distant and imposing figure behind a great silver hot-water kettle, who managed somehow between kipper and piles of toast and marmalade and oatmeal and tea to keep up a running story out of his newspapers,—Mr. Gordon Bennett's Herald, and even bigger sheets from abroad. It was all so simple. Sometimes today, I wish he could come back just for a single morning and read aloud to me and little Bordie and Howland about the entaglements of Europe and make thing clear. After breakfast we would all run to the window and shout one of Grandpapa's rhymes while we scanned the street for the morning mail: 4 “Once there was a postyman Wouldn't leave the letters. Put his hands in handy cuffs And put his feet in fetters.” Sometimes there were strangers for breakfast. A visiting Englishman in New York knew that 615 somehow belonged to him, and if he did not bring a letter to Grandpapa, he was soon introduced anyway and came to talk around the huge hot-water kettle. Other visitors, too, for Grandpapa, like Herbert Hoover, made breakfast an informal festivity, and his cordial “Drop in for breakfast” brought many kinds and varieties of men to talk with Edward Jaffray. Henry George was one, a grave man with feathery side-whiskers, fetching autographed books, and staying ever so long talking about free trade. Grandpapa was a Republican in politics, but free trade, absolute free trade, with no hitches about “for revenue only,” was a religion to him. As I look back, I wonder whether those free trade breakfast weren't my own political beginnings. There was a Captain Robinson, wide as the doorway and around as a squash who set the table rocking with laughter. He told us a story about arriving at the London docks late for a dinner party, From pinafores to politics, by Mrs. J. Borden Harriman http://www.loc.gov/resource/rbnawsa.n7479 and of rushing ashore and asking a cabby, “Will you take me to the Savoy for a shilling?” “Yes,” answered the cabby, eyeing his shape and size, “if you get in quick and the horse doesn't see you.” There was a Captain Grace who loved us dearly. He brought us a donkey from Ireland, but we named Edward S. Jaffray The Author's Grandfather Mrs. Edward S. Jaffray The Author's Grandmother 5 the pet Captain Grace, and he didn't understand the compliment. He always looked at us sorrowfully and never gave us another present. Captain Larbush wasn't a seafaring man like the others, but he was one hundred and eleven years old! He had fought in the Napoleonic wars, on the British side, but when he came to our house he was shrunken like an old bean pod, and he sopped his bread in his coffee saucer.