Salmagundi [Mrs. Cleveland]

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Title:     Salmagundi [Mrs. Cleveland]
Author: William Cowper Brann [More Titles by Brann]

The daily press announces that there is to be another Cleveland baby. It is to make its debut some time this month. "Mrs. Cleveland has been sewing dainty garments all summer." "Presents of beautiful baby clothes are arriving from friends and relatives." Same old gush, gush, gush! slop, slop, slop! that has set the nation retching three times already. Good Lord! will it never end? The fecundity of that family is becoming an American nightmare. Will the time ever come when a married woman of social prominence can get into "a delicate condition" without having the fact heralded over the country as brazenly as though she had committed a crime? There being little hope that the daily press--"public educator," "guardian of morality," etc.--will suffer a renascence of decency, we can only appeal to Grover not to let it happen again. He certainly owes it to the nation to apply the soft pedal to himself. In no other way can he protect a long-suffering nation from seasickness, or his estimable wife from the unclean harpies of the press. I do not believe that Mrs. Cleveland is particeps criminis in these pre-natal proclamations to which the h'upper suckkles of New York are so shockingly addicted. I do not believe that she cares to have the public contemplating her profile portrait just previous to a confinement. Of course it will be urged that a woman of much native delicacy could never have married so crass an animal as Grover Cleveland, have taken him fresh from the embraces of an old harlot like Widow Halpin; but these forget that he held the most exalted position of any man on earth, and his $50,000 per annum had been touched by the genie-wand jobbery--forget that

"--pomp and power alone are woman's care And where these are light Eros finds a feere; Maidens like moths, are eer caught by glare, And Mammon wins his way where Seraphs might despair."

Probably she has regretted a thousand times that she bartered her youth and beauty for life companionship with a tub of tallow, mistaken at the time for a god by a purblind public, but even though it be true, as often asserted, that the old boor gets drunk and beats her, a woman could scarce apply for divorce from a man who has twice been president. Furthermore, association with such a man will lower the noblest woman to his level. Every physiognomist who saw Frances Folsom's bright face, its spirituelle beauty, and who looks upon it now and notes it stolid, almost sodden expression, must recall those lines of Tennyson's:

"As the husband is the wife is; thou art mated with a clown, And the grossness of his nature will have weight to drag thee down. Cursed be the sickly forms that err from honest Nature's rule, Cursed be the gold that gilds the straiten'd forehead of the fool."

Last month it was announced with typographical and pictorial trumpet blasts that Mrs. Harry Payne Whitney was about to present her gilded dudelet with a family edition de luxe, and the Duchess of Marlborough to find an heir to that proud title whose foundation was laid with a sister's shame, the capstone placed by the pander's betrayal of his rightful prince; and now before the world can recover from its nausea, flaming headlines announce that the Clevelands are about to refill the family cradle. Hold our head, please, until we puke! Lord, Lord, is there nothing sacred about motherhood any more? Is a married woman no better than a brood-mare, her condition fair subject for comment by vulgar stable-boys? We thank thee, O God, that the South has not kept pace with New York's super-estheticism--that when our women find themselves in an "interesting condition" they seek the seclusion of the home instead of telephoning for a reporter and a chalk artist and exploiting their intumescence in the public prints.

. . .

Thomas M. Harris, who claims to be 84 years old, has writ a little yellow pamphlet entitled, "Rome's Responsibility for the Assassination of Abraham Lincoln." I have expended almost 5 minutes glancing over Mr. Harris labored lucubations, and must confess that I have in that time acquired more information--of its kind--than I ever did in 5 hours before. Of the reliability of his statements there can be no question, as most of them are grounded on the testimony of "Father" Chiniquy--conceded to be the most accomplished liar since Ananias gave up the ghost. It was Chiniquy who first started the story that the Pope was responsible for the assassination of President Lincoln, and I am expecting him to prove that Guiteau who gave the death-wound to Garfield, was a Jesuit in disguise and acted on orders received from Rome. Harris says that agents of the Confederacy in Canada--whom he admits were not Catholics--employed Booth and his accomplices to do the bloody business; that John Wilkes Booth was a Catholic; that the priests were all Southern sympathizers; that but 144,000 Irishmen enlisted in the Federal army, of whom 104,000 deserted; that the cellars of Catholic cathedrals are filled with munitions of war to be used against the government, that Catholics hold the bulk of the offices and dominate the American press. Harris says other things equally awful and interesting. I much fear that he got to thinking how many of his A. P. Apes have broken into the penitentiary, and dreamed a bad dream.

. . .

I once mentioned a little saweiety sheet, published in New York, under the title of Town Topics, because it afforded me a kind of languid pleasure to kick the feculent sewer-rat back into the foul cloaca from which it had crawled to beslime the ICONOCLAST. I must beg the patient reader's pardon for again soiling my sandal-shoon with what should only be touched with a shovel. I have been receiving through the mails for some time past, both from disgusted Northerners and indignant Southerners, a paragraph clipped from its epecine columns where in some mental misfit eager to do the Smart Alex act begs to be informed what right Mrs. Jefferson Davis had "to address a peculiar letter to the Queen Regent of Spain, demanding the release of a party accused of a serious crime," then adds: "If Miss Cisneros is released it will be because she is innocent, and not because her case has been meddled with by a party of irresponsible old freaks." I sometimes wish the ICONOCLAST had no lady readers, that I might freely express my opinion of such pestiferous pole-cats. I dearly love the ladies, but they are awfully in the way when only full-grown adjectives will do a subject justice. If the Tee-Tee editor had half the gumption of a Kansas Gopher he would know that neither Mrs. Davis nor any other American woman made such "demand." Perhaps he did not know it,--if it be possible for the editor of such a quintessential extract of utter idiocy to know anything--but couldn't resist the boorish impulse to insult an aged woman, because he's built that way. The case of Senorita Cisneros appealed to the sympathy of every manly man and noble woman throughout the world--to every living creature within whose hide there pulses one drop of human blood unblended with that of unclean breasts. Mrs. John A. Logan, Mrs. Jefferson Davis and other magnificent types of American womanhood, HUMBLY PETITIONED the Queen Regent of Spain in behalf of the Cuban heroine. And these noble women, whose names are respected in the very brothels and boozing kens of Boiler Avenue, are referred to by this foul parody on God's masterpiece as "a party of irresponsible old freaks." Christ! is it possible that aught born of woman--that any animal that can learn to walk on its hinder legs--should sink to such infamous depths of degradation! Yet this is the fellow who was so concerned for the feelings of certain sawciety she- males who personated French prostitutes at the Bradley-Martin debauch, that when I criticized their brazen bid for "business" he came near having hydrophobia. Did the Tee-Tee trogolodyte contain within his anthropodial diaphragm a single diatom of decency he would have applauded Mrs. Davis' womanly act, else blocked the yawning hole in his prognathic head with a flat-car load of compost. If Mrs. Davis is permitted to petition the King of Kings to have mercy on the miserable journalistic piano-pounder for Gotham's high-toned honk-a-tonks, certainly she may with propriety appeal to the substitute sovereign of a nation of bankrupt assassins to spare Senorita Cisneros.

. . .

Lawd Chelmsfold, now inspecting the Canadian border to ascertain what resistance it could offer in case of a brush with Uncle Sam, is out with an interview in which he says one great element of John Bull's strength is to be found in the fact that our Anglomaniacs could never be convinced "of the justice of any war that might spring up between America and Britain." Lawd Chelmsford, like most Englishmen, is a large, juicy chump. Of course our Anglomaniacs are all traitors in posse, as their Tory forbears were in esse, and would sympathize with "deah old England, dontcherknow," should war be precipitated by her burning all our coast cities without provocation; but as Chimmie Fadden would say, "Dat cuts no ice." They are but a few thousand in number, and in the whole caboodle there's not a chappie who would fight should a Digger Indian fill his ear with a bushel of buffalo chips, squirt tobacco juice on his twousahs and throw alkali dust in his optics. Lawd Chelmsford has suffered himself to be deceived by the bloodless hermaphrodites employed on such papers as Josef Phewlitzer's Verrult and Belo's double-barreled Benedict Arnold. Still it is just as well to know that John Bull considers that he can depend upon the sympathy and assistance of our Anglomaniacs in case of war with this country. While these fellows are slobbering over "the mother country," the leading papers of London are sneering at the United States as "a fourth-class power" and proclaiming that if it doesn't conduct itself more to John Bull's liking, "it will soon feel the iron hand beneath the velvet glove." Turn loose your "iron hand," you old he-bawd--and you'll soon stick it further under your own coat-tails than you did at Yorktown. . . .

The New York Wail and Distress approves the scheme of Spain, Italy and Germany, to establish a penal colony for anarchists. Yes, yes, granny dear; but would it not be much better to alter those conditions that produce anarchists. Anarchy is simply a protest against oppression. When enough people in a revolt against tyranny it becomes a successful revolution and its promoters are enshrined in history as worthy patriots. When a few men strike blindly but desperately at the hydra and are over- powered, they are traitors or anarchists, rebels or rioters. The Wail and Distress was once edited by a party who, according to his father-in-law, "could be more kinds of a d--n fool than any other man in the country," and it is evidently maintaining its old-time reputation.

. . .

It is reported that a British company is about to secure control of the Panama Canal. If it does so, John Bull will practically have Uncle Sam surrounded, and it is worthy of remark that, despite his tearful protestations of friendship, he fortifies every strategical point regardless of expense. What does he want with such Gibraltars as those at Van Couver, Halifax, Bermuda, St. Lucia and half a dozen other points if he loves us so dearly as Anglomaniacs would have us imagine? It costs hundreds of millions to construct and equip these fortifications, yet they are not worth a dollar to him except in case of war with this country. The fact is that he expects another tussle with the Western Titan--intends to precipitate it in his own good time--when India is quieted and he has naught to fear from the continental powers of Europe. Arbitration is the soothing lullaby which Anglomaniacs are to sing to his unsuspecting "cousin" until he gets his "iron hand" in order--weaves about him an anaconda-coil of cannon. Despite all the milk-sick drivel anent "ties of blood, language and literature," "community of interest of the ger-ate and gal-orious Anglo-Saxon race, ad infinitum, ad nauseam, the cold facts of history prove that for more than a century, England has been our implacable enemy. Why? Wounded pride in the first place, commercial rivalry in the second; but the chief reason is that England desires to perpetuate its supremacy as a world power, and sees growing up here a giant who will sooner or later, as Napoleon said, "clip the lion's claws." The best thing this nation can do is to quietly "fix" itself, and then at the first provocation compel J. B. to pull his freight completely out of the Western world. Uncle Sam is an idiot to go practically unarmed while British guns are pointing at his head from all directions. Arbitration the devil! Dismantle that cordon of forts which you have built for our benefit, and we may take some stock in your Pecksniffian professions of friendship. "Actions speak louder than words," says the old adage; and while J. B.'s words are those of Achates, his acts are those of an enemy. The voice is the voice of Jacob, but the hand is the hand of Esau.

. . .

If the dispatches from Hogansville, Ga. be correct, the present federal administration is depriving American citizens of their rights to an extent that suggests the impudence of Germany's swell-head emperor or the petty tyranny of the Turk. It appears that a nigger postmaster was appointed at that place who was persona non grata, and the people employed at their own expense the ex-postmaster to receive their mail for them from the moke. Although a man has an inalienable right to appoint what agent he pleases to receive his money or his mail, the ex-p. m. is to be prosecuted for "conducting a post-office." They then ordered their mail to an adjacent town and sent a private messenger for it, but this was prohibited on the plea that a only government has the right to establish a mail route." To crown the infamy the people were not permitted to mail their letters on postal cars. Here are three flagrant violations of the rights of American citizens, and to compel them to patronize a nigger Republican postmaster. The first agent employed by the people was no more "conducting a post-office" than is the ICONOCLAST, which receives and distributes the mail of a dozen or more people. The messenger sent to the adjacent town was no more running a mail route than is the farmer who brings to town the letters written by his neighbors and carries back those intended for them. The postal department has discharged its entire function when it receives mail, by whosoever presented, and delivers it to those for whom it is intended or to those duly authorized to receive it, and the postmaster-general who permits the department to exceed that simple duty and intermeddle with the rights of the people should not only be impeached and removed from office in one time and two motions, but taken by the slack of the pantalettes and pitched headlong into the penitentiary. It appears that the indignant people assaulted the nigger postmaster. That is indeed to be regretted; still I can but wonder that they do not shoot the whole umbilicus out of every impudent tool of a petty tyranny who attempts to prevent them mailing letters on postal cars while that right is freely accorded to others. The whole affair serves to accentuate the contention of the ICONOCLAST that postmasters should not be appointed by successful politicians, but elected by the people. If the latter can be trusted to choose presidents, congressmen, etc. they can certainly be trusted to select competent men to lick stamps and shuffle postal cards. As matters now stand the wishes of the people, who "pay the freight," are in no wise respected--the pie is shoveled out to a horde of hungry political heelers, not because of services rendered their country, but as payment for their pernicious activity in promoting the interests of a corrupt and conscienceless party. Thus it happens that in about half the cases federal officials are regarded with aversion by the people they are supposed to serve. It is to be hoped that every Southern white man who hereafter votes the Republican ticket will have his billets de amour clapper-clawed and liberally scented by some big fat coon.

. . .

The Buffalo (N.Y.) Distress, commenting on the acquittal of a negro near Barton, Ark., who killed another negro for having criminally assaulted a woman of their own race, wants to know if the law of justification would have held good had the rapist been a white man. Had the Distress but paused to reflect that the white men of Arkansas are free silver Democrats, it would not have indulged in a supposition so far-fetched and foolish. Now in Buffalo, which gave Cleveland to the country, and permits a nigger-loving lazar like the editor of the Distress to run at large, almost anything in petticoats, from old Sycorax to a malodorous coon, might be in some danger of assault by so-called Caucasians.

. . .

There's every indication that another gigantic prize fight fake will soon make a swipe for the long green of the cibarious sucker. Were it not a violation of the law of the land and the canons of the Baptist church to wager money that we should give to the missionaries, I'd risk six-bits that Corbett and Fitzsimmons get together within a year and that the gamblers who are on the inside "make a killing." For six months or more before their last mill these two worthies chewed the rag, making everybody believe that the battle was to be for berlud. The odds were on Corbett, and he got lost in the shuffle as a matter of course--just as Fitz did when he mixed it with Sharkey. Now the rag-chewing has begun over again, and Bob is doing the lordly contempt act just as Jeems did before the late unpleasantness. He has "retired"--wants Corbett to "go get er repertashun"--says "Corbett quit in the last go like er cowardly cur." It will take time to work the thing up, to resuscitate the old excitement, to set fools to betting wildly on their favorite; but when the pippin's ripe it will be pulled. There's not the slightest reason for the existence of any personal ill will between these pugs--it's all in the play, and being bad actors they overdo the part of Termagant, do protest too much. It is quite noticeable that in the "big fights" nowadays nobody gets seriously bruised. It's easy enough to start the claret, and an ounce o' blood well smeared satisfies the crowd as well as a barrel. The result of the "fight" will be determined beforehand--as soon as the managers learn how they can scoop the most money. The best thing you can do with your ducats is to send them to me with instructions to bet them even that Bill McKinley's job will soon fit Bryan. The man who bets on the result of a prize-fight ought to have a guardian appointed.

. . .

A Los Angeles, Cal., correspondent informs me that the editor of the Times of that town, who I trimmed up last month for permitting impudent coons to insult Southern white women through his columns, is named "Col." H. G. Otis, and that during the war he commanded a negro company. He also sends me the following extract from the alleged newspaper published by the ex-captain of the Darktown Paladins:

In considering the crimes of which some negroes are frequently guilty it should not be forgotten that these traits of violent sensuality are undoubtedly inherited from mothers and grandmothers who were subjected to the lust of their masters under the slavery system. In other words, the sins of the fathers are being visited upon their children to the third and fourth generation.

That is a vast improvement over the original statement published by Coon-Captain Otis to the effect that Southern white women seek black paramours, and that most lynchings are caused by the guilty parties getting caught. It is a matter of utter indifference to the ex-slaveholders what this calumnious little fice says about them, if he will but refrain from voiding his fetid rheum upon their families. Doubtless some slaveholders were degraded sensualists, but such were exceptions to the rule. Not one yaller nigger in a hundred is the child of its mother's old master. There were comparatively few mulattoes in the South before the war, most of these were the offspring of white overseers--and it is a notorious fact that a majority of our professional "nigger-drivers" were from the North. This is no reflection on the character of the Northern people--these fellows were simply the feculent scum, the excrementitious offscourings of civilization. And now I remember that a second-cousin of mine in Kentucky has an overseer from Ohio named Otis. A very thrifty and choleric man was my cousin, and considering a yaller nigger less valuable than a black one, he threatened to subject his overseer to a surgical operation if another half-breed pickaninny appeared on the place. I do wonder if this "Col." Otis--who knew so much about the management of coons that he was placed in command of a colored company--can be the same fellow; also what was the result of my relative's ultimatum? Can anybody in Los Angeles tell me what state this "Col." Otis came from, or send me a good picture of the ex-commander of coons?

. . .

While the preachers were hustling out of the fever infected districts of Louisiana, the Sisters of Charity were hurrying in from points as far distant as San Francisco. And what were the A. P. Apes doing? They were standing afar off, pointing the finger of scorn at these angels of mercy and calling them "prostitutes of the priesthood." In this land every man has a perfect right to entertain such religious views as he likes; but those who defame women who cheerfully risk their lives for others' sake should be promptly shot. "By their fruits ye shall know them," says the Good Book; and while the Church of Rome is producing Good Samaritans to wrestle with the plague, the A. P. Ape is filling the penitentiaries. I care nothing for the apostolic pretensions of the Pope or the dogmas of the Priesthood; but I'm strongly tempted to make a few off-hand observations with a six-shooter should these papaphobes speak disrespectfully of the Sisters of Charity in my presence.

. . .

Justice Van Fleet of the supreme court of California recently rendered an opinion which indicates the utter emptiness of our boast that in this land all men are equal before the law. Because of the confusion or ignorance of a new motorman, the young child of a plumber, playing upon the track, was killed by an electric car. The parents sued the company and were awarded damages in the sum of six thousand dollars. Defendant took an appeal, which the supreme court sustained, and the cause was remanded on the ground that the damages awarded were excessive--that the boy would probably have followed his father's occupation, and an embryo workman is not, in Justice Van Fleet's opinion, worth so much money! Measured by this standard, what would have been the average "value" of American presidents when they were boys? Now that Justice Van Fleet is measuring human life solely by the gold standard, perhaps he can tell us what a juvenile Shakespeare or Webster is "worth." I have held to the opinion heretofore that blood could not be measured by boodle, that the children of the common people were of as much importance in the eye of the law as the progeny of the plutocrat--that the anguish of parents did not depend on the length of the purse; but Justice Van Fleet seems to agree with Kernan's weeping Canuck, that the more siller one has the more deeply he feels the loss of a son. He seems to need a powerful cardac for his heart and a hot mush poultice for his head, being as fine a combination of knave and fool, as one can easily find. Had the supreme court declared that the plaintiffs in the case were not entitled to a dollar I would heartily approve the opinion; but to measure the "value" of a son by the gain-getting capacity of its sire is simply monstrous. A statute should be enforced impartially, without regard to persons; but I should like to see the law so amended that people could not trade upon their tears, could not coin the blood of their relatives to fill their pockets. A child should not be considered a piece of property for which the accidental destroyer must PAY, just as a railway company must cough up the cash value of the cow it kills. As not one child in a thousand ever returns to its parents the cost of its rearing it cannot be urged that the plaintiffs in this case were pecuniarily damaged one penny. All they had to sell was "mental anguish," and that should never be made a merchantable commodity. We have criminal courts to deal with those who, through criminal negligence or otherwise occasion death. It may be argued that when the party killed has dependants for whom he or she is providing, the slayer should be compelled to make good the damage in so far as money can do it. I say NO--that if there be blood guiltiness let the offender be punished in accordance with our criminal code; if there be none then is he blameless, and to deprive a person of his property because of a harmless act is a crime. "But the dependants should be provided for." Certainly they should; but not through rank injustice to others. We are carrying entirely too far the theory that the principal is responsible for the acts of his agents. If the agent is guilty of criminal negligence he is punished by one law and his principal by another; if the agent blunders he is found not guilty and discharged, yet his principal is punished for being a co-partner in his innocence. It should not be forgotten that the agent of a private company is also a representative of that larger and more powerful corporation which we call the state. The private company can do no more than outline his duty and discharge him for dereliction; the public corporation not only prescribes his duty but imprisons or hangs him for neglect; the private company is itself but a creation of the state which exercises over it autocratic power while shirking responsibility. If I loosen a rail on the "Katy" road and cause the destruction of $100,000 worth of property the company must pocket the loss, notwithstanding the fact that it is paying the state for protection. If a dozen people are killed in the wreck the relatives of the last one of them will sue for damages and the state compel it to pay for its own failure to afford that protection to which it is clearly entitled. What then? Let the state issue life insurance at cost and compel every person who has dependants to carry a policy payable on the annual installment plan. For 5 or 6 cents a day it can, without loss, issue a policy to every man in America that will provide his family with the necessaries of life for at least ten years after his death, and the man who cannot pay that premium is worth precious little to anybody considered purely from an economic standpoint. If the state wants to bring damage suits for the slaughter of its citizens, well and good; but for God's sake let us get rid of the degrading spectacle of people hawking the corpses of their relatives through the courts.

[The end]
William Cowper Brann's essay: Salmagundi [mrs. Cleveland]

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