Diary of George Templeton Strong, July 9, 1860

. . . I went up the river to Hudson, by the Rip Van Winkle, Friday afternoon, and took the Hudson and Berkshire road at five the next morning. Breakfasted at West Stockbridge and reached Great Barrington at ten-thirty after two most preposterous stoppages of some three hours.

Found Ellie and the children well and happy; Lewis—God save his Majesty—growing visibly from week to week. Certain drives and rambles, and church Sunday morning. . . .

SOURCE: Allan Nevins and Milton Halset Thomas, Editors, Diary of George Templeton Strong, Vol. 3, pp. 37-8

Diary of George Templeton Strong, July 10, 1860

Evening at Dr. Gilman’s in Thirteenth Street for a second consultation with our new allies of the College of Physicians and Surgeons about the projected Scientific School—the last hope of our “Columbia College Scientific Post-graduate Course.” Dr. Torrey, Mr. Ruggles, William Betts, and myself represented Columbia; Gilman and Delafield, Parker, St. John, and others of the Medical College faculty propounded their scheme. It promises well and may be nursed into vigorous life. The proposed course includes zoology, geology, and physiology. A year hence, we may add applied chemistry and engineering. We were all of one mind. William Betts takes hold very cordially. A special meeting of our board is to be called for the 19th instant. We signed a requisition to Governor Fish at Newport to summon it for that day. Ogden will oppose, of course, virtute officii, as treasurer and advocatus diaboli, but I think we shall put it through.

SOURCE: Allan Nevins and Milton Halset Thomas, Editors, Diary of George Templeton Strong, Vol. 3, p. 38

Diary of George Templeton Strong, July 19, 1860

Very muggy. Worse than anything this summer. Not early downtown, detained by dyspepsia. Special meeting of Columbia College trustees was called for two p.m. to consider the overtures of our Medical College allies. No quorum, only ten present. We talked them over informally. The plan did not find favor. Ogden, our treasurer, opposed every plan that involves outlay, ex-officio. He made a very clear and satisfactory statement of receipts and expenditures, showing a balance of several thousand dollars on the wrong side of the account for our next financial year. Governor Fish and John Astor were, on the whole, disinclined to disburse $2,500 on a doubtful experiment, at least until more Botanic Garden lots are leased. Cannot say they were wrong. Walked down to Pike’s after we separated, and then came home. Miss Rosalie called to ask after Ellie and the babies. I took a cup of coffee. Horace Binney came in and spent half the evening, and Dr. Gilman, to whom I had to report the failure of his scientific lecture project.

SOURCE: Allan Nevins and Milton Halset Thomas, Editors, Diary of George Templeton Strong, Vol. 3, p. 38

Diary of George Templeton Strong, Sunday, July 22, 1860

Hot day and a hot night, but breezy and tolerable enough. Quite refreshing after the three days of suffocating sultriness we have just passed through. . . .

Reading Ruskin's Modern Painters, volume five and last. Less vigorous than the other four. Effort at fine writing is manifest, and a “sensation” style; that is, a style that aims at astonishing the reader or stimulating his curiosity, and does not seek exclusively to convey the writer’s meaning with the maximum of clearness and brevity, which I suppose to be the sole office of language and test of “style.” A feeling of despondency and doubt is very manifest. He thinks the prospects of Christendom and its civilization discouraging, and the real value of discussions about art questionable.

SOURCE: Allan Nevins and Milton Halset Thomas, Editors, Diary of George Templeton Strong, Vol. 3, p. 39

Diary of George Templeton Strong, July 25, 1860

Just from Laura Keene’s with Charley Strong; Our American Cousin, revived. It retains its popularity. The house was full and enthusiastic. With all its extravagance and absurdity, the piece has strong points.

SOURCE: Allan Nevins and Milton Halset Thomas, Editors, Diary of George Templeton Strong, Vol. 3, p. 39

Diary of George Templeton Strong, August 3, 1860

Am elected to the New York Club! I shall not probably trouble the clubhouse much except during summer solitude, when it may be a little less disgusting than Delmonico’s. Dinner at any restaurant is a bore. Yesterday I dined at Dr. Peters’s; Fred Snelling and Dr. Alexander Mott also present.

SOURCE: Allan Nevins and Milton Halset Thomas, Editors, Diary of George Templeton Strong, Vol. 3, p. 39

Diary of George Templeton Strong, August 8, 1860

Here is a specimen of our political morals. General [John A.] Dix, Ike Fowler’s successor as postmaster, says he was called upon the other day by a delegation of prominent Democrats and requested to dismiss one of his subordinates for saying that “in his opinion Fowler was little better than a thief.” As Fowler is an absconding defaulter whose deficit is between $100,000 and $200,000, Dix declined compliance.

SOURCE: Allan Nevins and Milton Halset Thomas, Editors, Diary of George Templeton Strong, Vol. 3, p. 39

Diary of George Templeton Strong, August 15, 1860

Find myself on a committee headed by General Scott and William B. Astor to get up a “banquet” for Lord Renfrew, alias the Prince of Wales, when and if his Lordship’s Grace’s Highness comes to this city.

SOURCE: Allan Nevins and Milton Halset Thomas, Editors, Diary of George Templeton Strong, Vol. 3, p. 39

Diary of George Templeton Strong, August 16, 1860

Made my debut in the New York Club this afternoon. Dined there with Charles Strong better and more cheaply than at Del-monico’s. One enjoys, moreover, a sensation of being nobby and exclusive when one dines there, which ought to promote digestion, but it has 1 failed to do so this time, for I’m dyspeptic tonight with cephalalgic tendencies. Saw but a few men there, including Bill Pennington, who was a little tight and exuberantly cordial. My respect for the Club has greatly increased since Baron Rothschild’s friends had to withdraw his name, because the Baron, though illustrious and a millionaire, was immoderately given to lewd talk and nude photographs. I did not give the Council credit for moral courage enough to deny him admission.

After dinner George Anthon came in and we went to Niblo’s Pantomime and Horse-Opera. I came off before the performance was over, finding two hours of it sufficient. In Cinderella some two score very little children took part, some mere toddlers, and some very lovely. Poor little souls!—it’s a horrid, murderous sacrifice of childhood. But I suppose the sin rests on that convenient scapegoat, the abstraction we call "society.” I paid my fifty cents (or rather my dollar for an orchestra seat) like others, and so contributed, as much as any one person commonly contributes, to maintain this child-slaughtering system. But I really did not know or suspect, nor had I reason to suspect, that the entertainment I was "patronising” was to be provided, in part at least, at such terrible cost.

SOURCE: Allan Nevins and Milton Halset Thomas, Editors, Diary of George Templeton Strong, Vol. 3, pp. 39-40

Diary of George Templeton Strong, September 4, 1860

This morning a Trust Company meeting. Aftewards a session of our Prince-Catching Committee; some fifty present. We determined to enlarge our numbers to four hundred. Old Peter Cooper was in the chair and distinguished himself by invariably taking the question on the wrong motion, in spite of the whispered remonstrances of the secretary, Maunsell Field.

SOURCE: Allan Nevins and Milton Halset Thomas, Editors, Diary of George Templeton Strong, Vol. 3, p. 40

Diary of George Templeton Strong, September 6, 1860

Prince of Wales. Papers full of his movements—ad nauseam. He is in hot water just now with the Orangemen of Upper Canada, whom he refuses to recognize as Orangemen; that is, as a proscriptive, vindictive faction. His guardian, the Duke of Newcastle, would not let him land at Kingston, where the reception prepared for him was exclusively Orange and anti-Catholic. So the insulted Protestantism of all Upper Canada is in an uproar, and denounces his Royal Highness’s tutors and governors. That feeling may appear even during the Prince’s visit to this country, for our Know-Nothing lodges are, in fact, offshoots of Orangeism. But their influence and importance are next to nothing now, at least as compared with what they were of old.

Apropos of this theological subject, a Congregational "religious” newspaper of Boston announces with great satisfaction and complacency that Theodore Parker was killed by certain religious and orthodox women of that city, who prayed systematically that the mischief of his preaching might be stopped somehow. They heard with amazement and awe that his lungs had become affected and reverently recognized the tubercular deposits on those maleficent organs as a gracious response to their prayers. Hardly credible, but true and (as the Tribune suggests) alarming. Against what or whom will this death-dealing “circle” or coterie next direct its prevailing prayers? . . . Praying people to death is ugly work for Christian women.

SOURCE: Allan Nevins and Milton Halset Thomas, Editors, Diary of George Templeton Strong, Vol. 3, pp. 40-1

Diary of George Templeton Strong, Wednesday, September 12, 1860

Last Friday to Great Barrington. . . . Left Great Barrington at ten-thirty this morning. Very chill and savage easterly rain storm. Solaced myself with a novel of Wilkie Collins’s, The Woman in White, and Dumas's Mille et un fantomes. The former is of a class now uncommon, a novel depending for its interest mainly on an artistically constructed plot, attracting its reader by an elaborate puzzle which can be resolved only by those who read on to the last chapter.

SOURCE: Allan Nevins and Milton Halset Thomas, Editors, Diary of George Templeton Strong, Vol. 3, p. 41

Diary of George Templeton Strong, September 13, 1860

Dined at New York Club with Charles E. Strong and Henry Fearing. Thereafter we inspected the grand procession of the “Wide-Awakes,” a new notable club organization of the Republicans. It extends through these Northern states, is semi-military, and is intended (as people say) to keep order at Lincoln's inauguration (he will certainly be elected) in case Governor Wise and Mr. Yancey and other foolish Southern demagogues try to make a disturbance. This procession, which we watched in Astor Place and the Bowery, was imposing and splendid. The clubs marched in good order, each man with his torch or lamp of kerosene oil on a pole, with a flag below the light; and the line was further illuminated by the most lavish pyrotechnics. Every file had its rockets and its Roman candles, and the procession moved along under a galaxy of fire balls—white, red, and green. I have never seen so beautiful a spectacle on any political turnout.

SOURCE: Allan Nevins and Milton Halset Thomas, Editors, Diary of George Templeton Strong, Vol. 3, p. 41

Diary of George Templeton Strong, September 14, 1860

Went with George Anthon and Walter Cutting to the opera. Heard three acts of Martha in the Cutting box. Patti and Brignoli did fairly. House full, but strangers mostly. Music is pretty, but not very strong.

Last night’s Republican turnout is the town talk. Everyone speaks of the good order and the earnest aspect of the “Wide-Awakes,” and likens this to the “Tippecanoe and Tyler too” gatherings of 1840. Certainly, all the vigor and enthusiasm of this campaign are thus far confined to the Republicans. Their adversaries are disorganized, divided, and discouraged. In this state, there is a fusion (worse confounded) of the Union Party (Bell and Everett) with the Squatter Sovereignty Democrats (Douglas and Johnson), and a sort of feebly coherent composite electoral ticket. . . . They are trying to coalesce with the Breckinridge people so as to include in one ticket all the anti-Lincoln elements. But that seems as yet beyond the powers of political synthesis.

So we have three parties in this state, videlicet:

1. “Honest Abe” Lincoln’s party.

2. The Fusionists, whose ticket is twenty-five Douglas and Johnson, and ten Bell and Everett, and who are engineered by Washington Hunt and the New York Express and patronized as well-meaning people, but soon to fail, by die New York Herald.

3. Breckinridge and Lane’s party, consisting mainly of federal office-holders.

4. No. 4, "Sham” Houston’s party, has dissolved, that hero having magnanimously withdrawn.

I don’t know clearly on which side to count myself in. I’ve a leaning toward the Republicans. But I shall be sorry to see Seward and Thurlow Weed with their tail of profligate lobby men promoted from Albany to Washington. I do not like the tone of the Republican papers and party in regard to the John Brown business of last fall, and I do not think rail-splitting in early life a guarantee of fitness for the presidency.

I could vote for Bell and Mr. Orator Everett. But I can’t support them in their partnership with Douglas, the little giant, for I hold the little giant to be a mere demagogue. As to Breckinridge, the ultra Southern candidate, I renounce and abhor him and his party. He represents the most cruel, blind, unreasoning, cowardly, absolute despotism that now disgraces the earth, Garibaldi having probably squelched poor little Neapolitan Bomba before this date. Freedom of speech and of thought is extinct south of the Potomac. Life and property are as insecure there as in Paris in 1793 or in the Kingdom of Dahomey. Witness the atrocities daily perpetrated, for example, in Texas, where white men are being hanged and niggers burned by terrified Vigilance Committees, self-appointed and irresponsible, on the strength of legends about “one hundred bottles of strychnine” to be used by some nigger toxicologist to “poison the wells” of a whole county. These grisly antics of insane Southern mobs and the idiotic sanguinary babblings of Southern editors and orators tempt me to become a disunion man. Alliance with com-munities so lawless—more than semi-barbarous—seems degrading to the comparatively civilized North.

SOURCE: Allan Nevins and Milton Halset Thomas, Editors, Diary of George Templeton Strong, Vol. 3, pp. 41-2

Diary of George Templeton Strong, October 1, 1860

The Prince’s ball next week’s the chief topic of the town. The King of Naples has run away and Garibaldi triumphs. The House of Bourbon is on its last legs. John Jay has been making a row in the diocesan convention with a speech on the slave trade, which Mr. Ruggles says was very able. George Anthon suggests an alteration in the prayerbook for the benefit of the “Church South,” namely, in the prayer for persons I going to sea.¹ Instead of "these Thy servants,” add “These our servants,” and instead of “conduct him in safety to the haven where they would be,” read “. . . the haven where they wouldn’t be” (if they could help it, that is). . . .

_______________

¹ That is, for the slaves now being run in from Africa.

SOURCE: Allan Nevins and Milton Halset Thomas, Editors, Diary of George Templeton Strong, Vol. 3, pp. 42-3

Diary of George Templeton Strong, October 2, 1860

Diligent day. Having been put on the reception committee for the Prince of Wales’s ball, I attended a meeting thereof. There were Hamilton Fish, Luther Bradish, Perit, Maunsell Field, Mintum, Cisco, and myself. There was severe prosing on “nice sharp quillets” of etiquette. Bradish and Field were uncommonly solemn and impressive. With what manner of reception shall we receive General Scott? “Can he be separated from his military family?” There’s the rub. Shall we ten reception committeemen dress alike? Shall it be white vests and black cravats or vice versa? Are silk vests considered provincial in Paris? What manner of gloves prevailed at the Tuileries when Governor Fish was there last, and what light is thrown on the whole subject by Bradish’s little souvenirs of court society at the several capitals of Europe? Cisco and I are a sub-committee on the carriages that are to convey His Royal Highness and suite from the Fifth Avenue Hotel to the Opera House. O happy carriages, and horses too much blessed! I am a Committee of One to provide drinks for the special consolation of His Royal Highness in a small withdrawing room to be consecrated to that use. The Prince is said to be partial to sherry and seltzer water.

SOURCE: Allan Nevins and Milton Halset Thomas, Editors, Diary of George Templeton Strong, Vol. 3, pp. 42-3

Diary of George Templeton Strong, Friday, October 5, 1860

Wednesday night with Ellie, Miss Leavenworth, and Cameron to Tiffany’s shop in Broadway, where I had engaged a second story window. We inspected the grand National Wide-Awake torchlight procession. It was brilliant and successful. It was more than two hours in passing, and its most pleasing feature was the rear-rank of the last division. These demonstrations of the prevailing Republican party are elaborate and splendid, but cold and mechanical. One misses the spontaneous hullabaloo and furor of the Harrison campaign. Even in ’56 there was more enthusiasm. Of course, the corresponding depression on the other side is deeper yet. It is conceded that neither of the opposing candidates stands the smallest chance of election by the people. So Douglas men. Bell men, and Breckinridge men are all equally dumpish, and any excitement about fusion is impracticable. You can get up a hurrah for the gallant Smith or the "ga-lorious” Jones, but not for a mere abstraction for the generalization of Smith and Jones.

Much occupied with divers matters growing out of the expected advent of our "sweet young Prince.” "Long may he wave,” but I wish he were at home again with his royal mamma, and I hope the community won’t utterly disgrace itself before he goes away. The amount of tuft-hunting and Prince-worshiping threatens to be fearful; and, I don’t know how it happens, but I fear my share in the demonstration is to be much larger than I expected or desired. The Reception Committee met today and passed on divers weighty matters. It is proposed that we "wait on the Prince” the evening before the ball, which seems to me a very superfluous work of supererogation. All we can say or do is to express the hope that His Royal Highness finds himself pretty well, considering, and I think His Royal Highness will be inclined to take it for granted that we hope so, whether we call or not.

Maunsell Field’s exertions and labors over the arrangements for the ball are most arduous. He works all day and nearly all night and will break down if he isn’t careful. Honorable Luther Bradish has been sold with a grave suggestion that the Reception Committee wear small-clothes and silk-stockings, and was much exercised thereby. On reflection, he thought it might be, on the whole, highly becoming and proper. It seems a place on this committee is a much coveted place of honor. I was selected after great consideration. Very much obliged.

His Royal Highness is to attend services at Trinity Church on the 14th, "The First Sunday after the Ball” and the 18th after Trinity. The vestry met specially yesterday and a committee of arrangements was appointed: the Rector, Dunscomb, Hyslop, Cisco, and myself. The committee met this afternoon, and I walked up with Cisco, stopping at Mathews’s to arrange about the binding of a special prayerbook for His Royal Highness’s pew, with an inscription alluding to the former munificence of the British Crown to Trinity Church (Berrian suggested "his royal ancestors,” forgetting that His Royal Highness is descended neither from William and Mary nor from Queen Anne), and at Gimbrede’s about printing tickets of admission. We must admit by tickets or let the church be filled up with a mob, but I should much prefer to dispense with them.

SOURCE: Allan Nevins and Milton Halset Thomas, Editors, Diary of George Templeton Strong, Vol. 3, pp. 43-4

Diary of George Templeton Strong, Tuesday, October 9, 1860

Tomorrow we shall hear of today’s state election in Pennsylvania. Its result, if favorable to the Republicans, will be decisive, and one may in that case predict Lincoln’s election by the people with entire confidence. What will little South Carolina do then? If she doesn’t secede, she will be utterly ridiculous. She will have to make her choice between the guilt of treason and the contempt of mankind. . . .

SOURCE: Allan Nevins and Milton Halset Thomas, Editors, Diary of George Templeton Strong, Vol. 3, pp. 44-5

Diary of George Templeton Strong, October 10, 1860

Republicanism triumphant in Pennsylvania and by majorities that transcend the wildest prophesyings of the Tribune. So the question is settled and Honest Abe will be our next President. Amen. We may as well ask the question at once whether the existence of the Union depends on the submission to the South.

SOURCE: Allan Nevins and Milton Halset Thomas, Editors, Diary of George Templeton Strong, Vol. 3, p. 45

Diary of George Templeton Strong, October 11, 1860

I begin to be weary of this “sweet young Prince.” The Hope of England threatens to become a bore. In fact, he is a bore of the first order. Everybody has talked of nothing but His Royal Highness for the last week. Reaction is inevitable. It has set in, and by Monday next, the remotest allusion to His Royal Highness will act like ipecac. It has been a mild, bland, half-cloudy day. By ten o’clock, people were stationing themselves along the curbstones of Broadway and securing a good place to see the Prince. What a spectacle-loving people we are! Shops were closed and business paralyzed; Wall Street deserted. I spent the morning mostly at the Trinity vestry office, signing tickets, and so forth. We had to pass on a bushel of applications for admission next Sunday. Lots of Fifth Avenueites sent in letters, tendering a private carriage for the conveyance of His Royal Highness to church, with a postscript asking for a “few” tickets. Corporators of Trinity Church bluster about their rights and insist on reserved pews. I fear we are a city of snobs.

I lounged uptown at two o’clock, feeling my way through the crowd that filled Broadway. Omnibusses and carriages were turned into the side streets and all Broadway was one long dense mass of impatient humanity. All the windows on either side were filled. Temporary platforms crowded, at five dollars a seat. It was beyond the Japanese demonstration, though Mr. Superintendent Kennedy assured me the other day that the Prince of Wales would be less popular than Tommy.

At three, I went into the New York Club and took a seat with Charley, Seton, Pinckney, Stewart, Jem Strong, Bankhead, and others, at a convenient window. We watched and waited, and united in denunciation of F. Wood, Mayor, whom we assumed to have got the Prince in his grasp and to be detaining him with a speech at the City Hall. It was six o’clock and quite dark before the head of the procession reached us. We saw a six-horse barouche pass. We hurrahed. Ladies in the opposite windows waved their handkerchiefs. Little boys in the street hay-hayed. Elder loafers yelled, and the Prince was gone. Keen-sighted and self-confident men insisted that they had actually seen someone in scarlet uniform bowing his acknowledgments, but their assertions inspired no confidence. It was too dark to distinguish colors.

I fought my way home through the crowd. We dined at seven. Ellie and Johnny had “seen” the royal procession at Mrs. Cutting’s in Fifth Avenue, and Babbins at Union Square.

SOURCE: Allan Nevins and Milton Halset Thomas, Editors, Diary of George Templeton Strong, Vol. 3, pp. 45-6