Lend Me Your Ears: Great Speeches in History

by Unknown

  Well, the programme for the occasion was probably not more than one-third finished, but it ended there. Nobody rose. The next man hadn’t strength enough to get up, and everybody looked so dazed, so stupefied, paralyzed, it was impossible for anybody to do anything, or even try. Nothing could go on in that strange atmosphere. Howells mournfully, and without words, hitched himself to Bishop and me and supported us out of the room. It was very kind—he was most generous. He towed us tottering away into some room in that building, and we sat down there. I don’t know what my remark was now, but I know the nature of it. It was the kind of remark you make when you know that nothing in the world can help your case. But Howells was honest—he had to say the heartbreaking things he did say: that there was no help for this calamity, this shipwreck, this cataclysm; that this was the most disastrous thing that had ever happened in anybody’s history—and then he added, “That is, for you—and consider what you have done for Bishop. It is bad enough in your case, you deserve to suffer. You have committed this crime, and you deserve to have all you are going to get. But here is an innocent man. Bishop had never done you any harm, and see what you have done to him. He can never hold his head up again. The world can never look upon Bishop as being a live person. He is a corpse.”

  ***

  That is the history of that episode of twenty-eight years ago, which pretty nearly killed me with shame during that first year or two whenever it forced its way into my mind.

  Now then, I take that speech up and examine it. As I said, it arrived this morning, from Boston. I have read it twice, and unless I am an idiot, it hasn’t a single defect in it from the first word to the last. It is just as good as good can be. It is smart; it is saturated with humor. There isn’t a suggestion of coarseness or vulgarity in it anywhere. What could have been the matter with that house? It is amazing, it is incredible, that they didn’t shout with laughter, and those deities the loudest of them all. Could the fault have been with me? Did I lose courage when I saw those great men up there whom I was going to describe in such a strange fashion? If that happened, if I showed doubt, that can account for it, for you can’t be successfully funny if you show that you are afraid of it. Well, I can’t account for it, but if I had those beloved and revered old literary immortals back here now on the platform at Carnegie Hall I would take that same old speech, deliver it, word for word, and melt them till they’d run all over that stage. Oh, the fault must have been with me, it is not in the speech at all.

  This is an occasion peculiarly meet for the digging up of pleasant reminiscences concerning literary folk; therefore I will drop lightly into history myself. Standing here on the shore of the Atlantic and contemplating certain of its largest literary billows, I am reminded of a thing which happened to me thirteen years ago, when I had just succeeded in stirring up a little Nevadian literary puddle myself, whose spume-flakes were beginning to blow thinly Californiaward. I started an inspection tramp through the southern mines of California. I was callow and conceited, and I resolved to try the virtue of my nom de guerre.

  I very soon had an opportunity. I knocked at a miner’s lonely log cabin in the foothills of the Sierras just at nightfall. It was snowing at the time. A jaded, melancholy man of fifty, barefooted, opened the door to me. When he heard my nom de guerre he looked more dejected than before. He let me in—pretty reluctantly, I thought—and after the customary bacon and beans, black coffee, and hot whisky, I took a pipe. This sorrowful man had not said three words up to this time. Now he spoke up and said, in the voice of one who is secretly suffering, “You’re the fourth—I’m going to move.” “The fourth what?” said I. “The fourth littery man that has been here in twenty-four hours—I’m going to move.” “You don’t tell me!” said I; “who were the others?” “Mr. Longfellow, Mr. Emerson, and Mr. Oliver Wendell Holmes—consound the lot!”

  You can easily believe I was interested. I supplicated—three hot whiskys did the rest—and finally the melancholy miner began. Said he: “They came here just at dark yesterday evening, and I let them in of course. Said they were going to the Yosemite. They were a rough lot, but that’s nothing; everybody looks rough that travels afoot. Mr. Emerson was a seedy little bit of a chap, redheaded. Mr. Holmes was as fat as a balloon; he weighed as much as three hundred, and had double chins all the way down to his stomach. Mr. Longfellow was built like a prize-fighter. His head was cropped and bristly, like as if he had a wig made of hairbrushes. His nose lay straight down his face, like a finger with the end joint tilted up. They had been drinking, I could see that. And what queer talk they used! Mr. Holmes inspected this cabin, then he took me by the buttonhole, and says he:

  “‘Through the deep caves of thought

  I hear a voice that sings,

  Build thee more stately mansions,

  O my soul!’

  “Says I, ‘I can’t afford it, Mr. Holmes, and moreover I don’t want to.’ Blamed if I liked it pretty well, either, coming from a stranger, that way. However, I started to get out my bacon and beans, when Mr. Emerson came and looked on awhile, and then he takes me aside by the buttonhole and says:

  “‘Give me agates for my meat;

  Give me cantharids to eat;

  From air and ocean bring me foods,

  From all zones and altitudes.’

  “Says I, ‘Mr. Emerson, if you’ll excuse me, this ain’t no hotel.’ You see it sort of riled me—I warn’t used to the ways of littery swells. But I went on a-sweating over my work, and next comes Mr. Longfellow and buttonholes me, and interrupts me. Says he:

  “‘Honor be to Mudjekeewis!

  You shall hear how Pau-Puk-Keewis—’

  “But I broke in, and says I, ‘Beg your pardon, Mr. Longfellow, if you’ll be so kind as to hold your yawp for about five minutes and let me get this grub ready, you’ll do me proud.’ Well, sir, after they’d filled up I set out the jug. Mr. Holmes looks at it, and then he fires up all of a sudden and yells:

  “‘Flash out a stream of blood-red wine!

  For I would drink to other days.’

  “By George, I was getting kind of worked up. I don’t deny it, I was getting kind of worked up. I turns to Mr. Holmes, and says I, ‘Looky here, my fat friend, I’m a-running this shanty, and if the court knows herself, you’ll take whisky straight or you’ll go dry.’ Them’s the very words I said to him. Now, I don’t want to sass such famous littery people, but you see they kind of forced me. There ain’t nothing onreasonable ’bout me; I don’t mind a passel of guests a-treadin’ on my tail three or four times, but when it comes to standing on it it’s different, ‘and if the court knows herself,’ I says, ‘you’ll take whisky straight or you’ll go dry.’ Well, between drinks they’d swell around the cabin and strike attitudes and spout; and pretty soon they got out a greasy old deck and went to playing euchre at ten cents a corner—on trust. I began to notice some pretty suspicious things. Mr. Emerson dealt, looked at his hand, shook his head, says:

  “‘I am the doubter and the doubt—’

  and ca’mly bunched the hands and went to shuffling for a new layout, Says he:

  “‘They reckon ill who leave me out;

  They know not well the subtle ways I keep.

  I pass and deal again!’

  Hang’d if he didn’t go ahead and do it, too! Oh, he was a cool one! Well, in about a minute things were running pretty tight, but all of a sudden I see by Mr. Emerson’s eye he judged he had ’em. He had already corralled two tricks, and each of the others one. So now he kind of lifts a little in his chair and says:

  “‘I tire of globes and aces!—

  Too long the game is played!’

  —and down he fetched a right bower. Mr. Longfellow smiles as sweet as pie and says:

  “‘Thanks, thanks to thee, my worthy friend,

  For the lesson thou hast taught.’

  —and blamed if he didn’t down with another right bower! Emerson claps his hand on his bowie, Longfellow claps his on his revolver, and I went under a
bunk. There was going to be trouble; but that monstrous Holmes rose up, wobbling his double chins, and says he, ‘Order, gentlemen; the first man that draws, I’ll lay down on him and smother him!’ All quiet on the Potomac, you bet!

  “They were pretty how-come-you-so by now, and they begun to blow. Emerson says, ‘The nobbiest thing I ever wrote was “Barbara Frietchie.”’ Says Longfellow, ‘It don’t begin with my “Biglow Papers.”’

  Says Holmes, ‘My “Thanatopsis” lays over ’em both.’ They mighty near ended in a fight. Then they wished they had some more company—and Mr. Emerson pointed to me and says:

  “‘Is yonder squalid peasant all

  That this proud nursery could breed?’

  He was a-whetting his bowie on his boot—so I let it pass. Well, sir, next they took it into their heads that they would like some music; so they made me stand up and sing ‘When Johnny Comes Marching Home’ till I dropped—at thirteen minutes past four this morning. That’s what I’ve been through, my friend. When I woke at seven, they were leaving, thank goodness, and Mr. Longfellow had my only boots on, and his’n under his arm. Says I, ‘Hold on, there, Evangeline, what are you going to do with them?’ He says, ‘Going to make tracks with ’em; because:

  “‘Lives of great men all remind us

  We can make our lives sublime;

  And, departing, leave behind us

  Footprints on the sands of time.’

  As I said, Mr. Twain, you are the fourth in twenty-four hours—and I’m going to move; I ain’t suited to a littery atmosphere.”

  I said to the miner, “Why, my dear sir, these were not the gracious singers to whom we and the world pay loving reverence and homage; these were impostors.”

  The miner investigated me with a calm eye for a while; then said he, “Ah! impostors, were they? Are you?”

  I did not pursue the subject, and since then I have not traveled on my nom de guerre enough to hurt. Such was the reminiscence I was moved to contribute, Mr. Chairman. In my enthusiasm I may have exaggerated the details a little, but you will easily forgive me that fault, since I believe it is the first time I have ever deflected from perpendicular fact on an occasion like this.

  First Female Member of Parliament, Lady Astor, Expounds on Women in Politics

  “We realize that no one sex can govern alone…. I can conceive of nothing worse than a man-governed world except a woman-governed world…”

  Nancy Langhorne of Virginia began her political career at the age of fourteen during a visit to the Chicago World’s Fair in 1893. When a band struck up the Union song “Marching Through Georgia,” she leaped to her feet to yell, “Three cheers for Robert E. Lee!” In recounting this episode to the New York Herald Tribune’s John Reagan “Tex” McCrary, Lady Astor noted: “That was the last time I was spanked for a combination of patriotism and cheek.”

  The southern beauty (her sister married the artist Charles Gibson and was the model for the Gibson Girl) married Waldorf Astor, who owned the Observer and served in the House of Commons until he was elevated to the House of Lords as the second Viscount Astor in 1910. Nine years later, his wife was elected to his constituency in Plymouth, and took her place in history as the first woman chosen by the people to serve in the “Mother of Parliaments.”

  Renowned for her outspokenness, she recalled being told in 1906 by the other American at the Court of St. James’s, United States Ambassador Whitelaw Reid, “Modulate your voice, my dear, modulate your voice.” She learned to do that, but not her opinions: in the late thirties, her home at Cliveden in Buckinghamshire became the salon for Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and British isolationists despised as “appeasers” by Winston Churchill. She retired from Parliament in 1945 and died in 1964, remembered for her espousal of women’s rights, public education, temperance, and—unfortunately—the appeasement of “the Cliveden set.”

  This speech, made at Town Hall in New York on April 9, 1922, and put together from newspaper reports, was delivered (presumably in a well-modulated voice) less than three years after she became the first woman M.P. It is notable for its projection of personality and character: the tone is chatty, feisty, common-sensical, and unabashedly opinionated. The account of personal experience in the beginning leads to the didactic middle and exhortative conclusion. “Now, why are we in politics? What is it all about?” she asks rhetorically, and answers, “Something bigger than ourselves. Schopenhauer was wrong…”

  ***

  I KNOW THAT this welcome has nothing to do with me. Ever since I entered the “Mother of Parliaments” I realized that I ceased to be a person and had become a symbol. The safe thing about being a symbol is this—you realize that you, of yourself, can do nothing, but what you symbolize gives you courage and strength and should give you wisdom. I certainly have been given courage and strength, and I won’t say too much about wisdom.

  My entrance into the House of Commons was not, as some thought, in the nature of a revolution. It was an evolution. It is rather interesting how it came about. My husband was the one who started me off on this downward path—from the fireside to public life. If I have helped the cause of women he is the one to thank, not me. He is a strange and a remarkable man.

  First, it was strange to urge your wife to take up public life, especially as he is a most domesticated man; but the truth is that he is a born social reformer. He has avoided the pitfalls which so many well-to-do men fall into. He doesn’t think that you can right wrongs with philanthropy. He realizes that one must go to the bottom of the causes of wrongs and not simply gild them up.

  For eleven years, I helped my husband with his work at Plymouth—I found out the wrongs and he tried to right them—and this combination of work was a wonderful and happy combination and I often wish that it was still going on.

  However, I am not here to tell you of his work, but it is interesting in so far that it shows you how it came about that I stood for Parliament at all. Unless he had been the kind of a man he was, I don’t believe that the first woman member of the oldest Parliament in the world would have come from Plymouth, and that would have been a pity. Plymouth is an ideal port to sail from or to. It has been bidding godspeed to so many voyagers. I felt that I was embarking on a voyage of faith, but when I arrived at my destination some of the honorable members looked upon me more as a pirate than a pilgrim.

  A woman in the House of Commons! It was almost enough to have broken up the House. I don’t blame them—it was equally hard on the woman as it was on them. A pioneer may be a picturesque figure, but they are often rather lonely ones. I must say for the House of Commons, they bore their shock with dauntless decency. No body of men could have been kinder and fairer to a “pirate” than they were. When you hear people over here trying to run down England, please remember that England was the first large country to give the vote to women and that the men of England welcomed an American-born woman in the House with a fairness and a justice which, at least, this woman never will forget.

  The different ones received me in different ways. I shall never forget a Scotch labor leader coming up to me, after I had been in the House a little while, and telling me that I wasn’t a bit the sort of woman he thought I would be—“I’ll not tell you that, but I know now that you are an ordinary, homely, kindly body,” and he has proved it since by often asking my advice on domestic questions.

  Then there was an Irish member who said to me, “I don’t know what you are going to speak about, but I am here to back you.” And the last was from a regular Noah’s Ark man, a typical squire type. After two and a half years of never agreeing on any point with him, he remarked to someone that I was a very stupid woman but he must add that I was a “very attractive one,” and he feared I was a thoroughly honest social reformer. I might add that being the first woman, I had to take up many causes which no one would call exactly popular. I also had to go up against a prejudice of generations, but I must say their decency has never failed, though my manners must have been somewhat of a trial.


  Now I must leave the more personal side and get to what it is all about and why we are here. Women and politics—some women have always been in politics, and have not done badly, either. It was when we had the Lancastrian kings that it was said that the kings were made kings by act of Parliament—they did rule by means of Parliament. Then Henry VIII, that old scalawag, accepted the principles of the Lancastrians to rule by Parliament, but he wanted the principle in an entirely different way. He made Parliament the engine of his will: he pressed or frightened it into doing anything he wished. Under his guidance Parliament defied and crushed all other powers, spiritually and temporally, and he did things which no king or Parliament ever attempted to do—things unheard of and terrible.