Hay tried to stay out of sight during the trip, but without much luck. Reporters met the Cretic in the Azores, Gibraltar, and again at Algiers, and from each spot wired to America that Hay reported he’d had a good passage and his health was recovering. After a few days in Italy, Hay and his wife went to the spas near Wiesbaden in Germany for five weeks, where Hay chafed over the inactivity. He also slowly regained strength. Heads of European states sent queries about visits, but he rejected them all, saying he needed to focus on his health. King Leopold of Belgium simply showed up, and Hay entertained him briefly and unofficially, but that was one of the few bits of work that managed to crash the walls Hay had erected. He joked about his health and his recovery in letters to friends. “My doctor here says there is nothing the matter with me except old age, the Senate, and two or three other mortal maladies, and so I am going to Nauheim to be cured of them all,” he wrote to the sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens from Nervi, Italy, shortly after arriving in Europe. The Hays spent a few days in Paris in late May with his old friend Henry Adams, the writer, then on June 2 moved on to London. Hay had a quiet half-hour meeting with King Edward at Buckingham Palace but otherwise stayed out of sight, meeting with friends like painter Edwin Abbey rather than political figures. On June 7, the Hays boarded the White Star line’s two-year-old steamship the Baltic in Liverpool for an uneventful passage to Manhattan, arriving on the evening of June 15.11
Hay looked much stronger and healthier when he landed than when he had left three months earlier. But his physical appearance masked what was the continued deterioration of a man who had been the confidante of four presidents—Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley, and now Roosevelt—as well as artists and writers, and who had helped form American foreign policy as the United States rose to the world stage.
Nine days after landing in Manhattan, Hay left Washington for his summer residence in Newbury, New Hampshire. On June 27, he fell ill with uremia—kidney failure—though he was quickly pronounced much improved after a visit from a local doctor. Near midnight of June 30, doctors were again summoned to the lakeside estate, where, shortly after retiring for the evening, Hay suddenly had trouble breathing. The descent was rapid and unstoppable. He died a short time later, at 12:25 AM on July 1, of a pulmonary embolism, ending one of the most intriguing lives of the era.12
17
A Celebration and a Delay
SYMBOLISM CAN BE A powerful tool, and Porter and his colleagues at the State Department were eager to surround the transfer of Jones’s body to America with as much fanfare as they could muster. Porter urged that a fleet of US Navy ships be dispatched to arrive in France by early June, allowing time for ceremonies and celebrations in Paris, and at the port of Cherbourg, before the ships began the journey west, timing the delivery of Jones’s body on American soil with the Fourth of July. “When the body is borne through the city of Paris, we can count upon the French government to provide a military escort commensurate with his rank and to take every possible measure to do honor to his memory,” Porter wrote to Assistant Secretary of State Loomis. But delays could cause problems. “Parliament generally adjourns the first week in July and after July 14th, the French Independence Day, official persons and the people generally begin to leave the city for their summer vacations.” Porter sought a quick decision, but Washington had other ideas, and the decision lagged, much to Porter’s frustration.1
On May 1, McCormick formally took control of the US Embassy in France, which had once again moved, this time to 12 Quai de Billy, along the Right Bank of the Seine just east of the Exposition Universelle fairgrounds. It was about four blocks from the embassy Porter had established on Avenue Kleber when he arrived in Paris. Where Porter’s embassy was a functional space, the new embassy was a step toward the ostentatious; it had more in common with Porter’s rented mansion than his diplomatic offices. The vestibule was walled with white and green marble and decorated with Louis XV tapestries. A grand marble staircase in the center of the room carried visitors to a bank of rooms overlooking the Seine, each decorated with ebony and gold, the ceilings covered with frescoes of Venus on a chariot and other classical depictions. The dining hall was warmed by a large fireplace, and the sixty-square-foot “festival Salon” was adorned with tapestries and frescoes as well as selections from McCormick’s private collection of portraits of Napoleon, Washington, and other heralded leaders and statesmen of the past.2
Through the first couple of weeks of May, McCormick slipped into the ambassador’s harness with the formal presentation of his credentials to President Loubet and endless meetings with high French officials and fellow diplomats. Porter, formal duties done, hit the dinner circuit, taking a seat at the head table of a series of banquets organized in his honor. He was alone in Paris and busied himself with the mundane details of packing up his possessions and arranging to have them shipped home. He and McCormick also continued to press Washington for a decision on when and how to move Jones’s body. Porter, in fact, was becoming anxious over what he saw as an unnecessary delay in coming to a decision; French law, he informed Assistant Secretary of State Loomis, forbade storing a human body above ground for a protracted length of time, and he feared testing the French authorities’ patience. Yet he also said that he felt he could squeeze an extension from the French, which suggests that he was using the French laws as a goad to get an answer from Washington.3
The decision ultimately was made by Roosevelt, reflecting his keen interest in Porter’s project. On May 12, during a cabinet meeting at the White House, the president ordered that a special squadron under Rear Admiral Charles Sigsbee, who had been in command of the USS Maine when it blew apart and sank off Havana, be sent to France to reclaim Jones’s body and return it to the United States. Loomis was planning to be in Europe in July to meet with foreign ministers in several countries, and it was decided he would be named a special ambassador to France with a single assignment: to receive the body, which eventually would be interred at the US Naval Academy at Annapolis. Which meant that the navy had won the fight over who would get the body.
Porter began making arrangements in earnest. Then he received another telegram from Washington telling him to hold off—there was a new wrinkle. Porter’s frustration seeped through in his cable back to Loomis: “I would strongly recommend that if the squadron can possibly get here in time, the Fourth should be named.” Porter said he had discussed the plans with President Loubet, the French minister of foreign affairs, and the heads of the French army and navy, who all “considered that day a very convenient and most fitting one for France to pay her homage to the memory of our admiral and [were] anxious to arrange imposing ceremonies if notified a reasonable time in advance, consisting of a military and a naval escort and the participation of her public men.”
Since the Exposition Universelle in 1900, Paris had celebrated July 4 as “America’s Day, and there is a gratifying display of American flags, etc.,” which would add to the celebration of Jones were the body shipped out that day. And to wait longer, Porter warned, would conflict with French celebrations tied to Bastille Day. The Americans also risked a public relations problem. “If postponed too long, the people here and at home might construe the delay as neglect, as great indignation has been aroused by the negligence which continued one hundred thirteen years during which the body has been allowed to lie in a wretched spot in a foreign land, and they naturally would like to see it taken home as early as arrangements can be conveniently made for that purpose.”4 Washington finally agreed, though the date ultimately was pushed back a couple of days to July 6, Jones’s birthday.
Another problem cropped up, however. The French had ceded the body to Ambassador Porter, who was now a private citizen, so it was no longer France’s body to turn over to Loomis. And there were legal and diplomatic uncertainties over whether Porter, as a private American, could hand over the body to the new US ambassador—the kind of tempest that would seem to roil only a diplomat’s teapot. The solution: President Roosevelt app
ointed Porter a temporary and special ambassador to France, in addition to McCormick and Loomis. Porter was once again an official representative of the United States, but with a very narrow portfolio.5
The squadron came together June 7 at the US Naval Frontier Base at Tompkinsville, Staten Island, in New York, under Sigsbee’s command. The flagship was the USS Brooklyn, an armored cruiser under Captain John M. Hawley, accompanied by three other cruisers, each only about two years old: USS Tacoma, the USS Galveston, and the USS Chattanooga. As the ships were being provisioned, crews built an oak stage on the deck of the Brooklyn just outside Sigsbee’s midship quarters. It was protected by a canopy and curtained with both US and French flags and a silk ensign provided by the Daughters of the American Revolution. The organizers hoped it would be a fitting place to secure Jones’s coffin for the journey back.
The departure was delayed a few days as more logistics were worked out on the French end. There were concerns that Cherbourg, the planned port for transferring the body to Sigsbee’s squadron, might not be large enough to handle the number of people and ships expected. By June 11 the decision was made to send the ships to Le Havre instead, because it was larger and closer to Paris.6 Le Havre also lies at the mouth of the Seine, and the initial plan was to float Jones’s body by river barge for the transfer. For reasons that remain murky, though, the French decided that Cherbourg would work after all, and the plans shifted back. That made it impossible to send Jones’s body by river barge, so fresh plans had to be made for moving him by train.7 While the organizers and diplomats wrangled, Sigsbee and his ships sat at anchor off Staten Island, the naval version of twiddling their thumbs, before finally getting the word to proceed, and the squadron steamed out to sea at 1 PM on June 18. “Because of the recently reported icebergs and floes well to the southward of the Great Bank,” Sigsbee later reported, “I chose the most southerly steamship route for the passage.”8
It was an uneventful crossing, marked by clouds, a mix of rain and mist for most of the trip, and moderate seas. The squadron encountered several ships along the way, mostly masted schooners that were duly noted in the log.9 They came within sight on June 26 of the eastbound Deutschland and, a few hours later, the westbound New York, both steam-powered passenger ships.
Some of the crew aboard the Brooklyn were part of an experiment in wireless telegraphy. Only three years earlier radio pioneer Guglielmo Marconi had sent the first wireless message across the Atlantic, and two years earlier President Roosevelt sent a message via a new station in Wellfleet, Massachusetts, across the sea to England’s King Edward II, the first transatlantic wireless message to originate in the United States. The Brooklyn was taking part in more experiments in that vein, and the crew reported receiving a wireless message 1,040 miles into the voyage, and again some 1,000 miles west of Poldhu station in southwest England.10 Yet they couldn’t get an answer out of either the Deutschland or the New York, though they could hear transmissions from the two ships.
“I asked the captain of the Deutschland to let me know what weather he had had,” Sigsbee later reported. “He paid no attention to my message, but informed the other vessel, the New York, of the weather conditions. It is possible that this was done in order to give me my information indirectly…. I understand that vessels having the Marconi wireless apparatus are not allowed to communicate with vessels having other apparatus.” Sigsbee saw the obvious problem with observing such exclusivity. “One result of the adoption of the Marconi apparatus is to set aside the ordinary helpful amenities of the sea, which is greatly to be regretted.”11
Around 1 PM on June 29, the squadron steamed within sight of Bishop Rock, the remote lighthouse marking the eastern end of the North Atlantic steamship route. As they pressed on, the ships were enveloped by a thick fog off the tip of Bretagne, which lasted through the night. The weather disrupted their radio transmissions, and Sigsbee reported he had trouble moving a squadron of four ships in formation at 11 knots when they couldn’t see each other or the approaching coast and had to make repeated and sudden stops to take soundings and make course corrections. “I have had much experience with squadrons in fog,” Sigsbee said, “but this was by far the most difficult case within my experience.” The ships used gun fire to signal one another, and an unintended benefit was that the blasts alerted the French port officials that the ships were near. “No landmarks were seen, nor any whistle heard, until we sighted the breakwater fort at the western entrance to Cherbourg, about two miles distant, and saw the pilot boats coming out.” They had found the harbor at Cherbourg with pinpoint accuracy. “John Paul Jones himself would have applauded such an example of excellent navigation,” wrote shipboard chronicler Henri Marion, a French-speaking history professor at the US Naval Academy who had come along to record the events and act as an interpreter for Sigsbee.12 Sigsbee finally got a wireless message through to shore that the squadron had arrived, and asked that the embassy and other American officials be sent wires announcing their arrival. After exchanging cannon salutes with French military detachments ashore, the American ships dropped anchor.
Sigsbee’s squadron had been in harbor less than a day when word reached Europe of Secretary Hay’s death in New Hampshire. Shock and grief spread among those who had known the secretary of state, including Porter and McCormick. That was followed quickly by discussions about how the Embassy and American expatriate community should respond. The new ambassador was planning to continue Porter’s tradition of hosting a massive party for American expatriates to celebrate the Fourth of July; Hay’s death made that seem inappropriate. “Conceiving it to be the best expression of the sentiments of Americans in Paris over our country’s great loss, I have closed my house on the Fourth of July, abandoning usual reception,” McCormick cabled to Washington. But there were too many moving parts to the transfer of Jones’s body to add a delay now, he believed. “Pending instructions and believing it to be in accordance with the wishes of the president,” he cabled, “I have suggested no change in the functions in connection with the turning over of the remains of Admiral Paul Jones by special ambassador Porter to special ambassador Loomis, on account of the lamented death of Mr. Hay.”13
So the party would go on.
The ceremonies marking the dispatch of Jones’s body would be a binational affair, and on the morning of July 1, a contingent of three French naval ships arrived at Cherbourg to represent the French role in Jones’s life and his death. American sailors granted shore leave mingled with French sailors and local residents excited by the surprise role they were playing in what they saw as a historic moment. There were garden parties and theatrical programs, impromptu celebrations and navy-versus-navy rowing and boating contests. On the Fourth of July itself, ships from both navies anchored at Cherbourg were ablaze with lights in celebration. Mixed in with the celebrations, though, were visits to a quiet cemetery that held the bodies of American seamen who had died in the June 27, 1864, Civil War naval battle off Cherbourg between the Union sloop of war Kearsarge and the Confederate cruiser Alabama, a battle won by the North.14
Rear Admiral Sigsbee missed most of the Cherbourg parties. Around 5 PM on July 1, Sigsbee and a contingent of ten officers (including the captain of each of his ships) boarded a train for Paris, arriving a little after midnight, and headed directly to the small but exclusive Hôtel Brighton, across Rue de Rivoli from the Jardin des Tuileries. Hours after Sigsbee and his men left for Paris, Loomis arrived in Cherbourg on the steamship Philadelphia. A dispatch boat collected him and took him to the Brooklyn, where he spent the night before taking a morning train for Paris, arriving in midafternoon.
The American representatives spent the next few days bouncing among parties and diplomatic duties. They met with McCormick and Porter at the embassy, and French premier Maurice Rouvier and President Loubet in their offices. Loubet also hosted a Fourth of July reception at the Élysée Palace for the Americans, a fete that was more subdued than originally planned out of deference to official US mourning of
Hay. Every movement by the Americans, who were invariably in their navy dress uniforms, was a small parade, complete with crowds along the streets to watch and applaud their passage. And they were accompanied everywhere by contingents of French cuirassiers, soldiers in dress uniform atop decorated horses.
Parties and receptions gave way to even grander ceremonies on July 6. A detachment of some five hundred US sailors and marines boarded a special train in Cherbourg at 3 AM, disembarking at the Gare des Invalides on Paris’s Left Bank at 11:40 AM. As they left the station, they met a squadron of French infantry, with whom they exchanged salutes and then national anthems, and joined in a march to the nearby École Militaire, drawing cheers from a thickening crowd. After a luncheon, the two military contingents marched to the American Church for the 3:30 PM ceremony.
The church was decorated as though for a state funeral, with masses of flowers and plants filling the air with a light scent. The coffin had already been reclaimed from the basement cloister and placed on a stand at the head of the church, in front of the altar. Huissiers, French men in formal clothes and wearing large silver chains, served as ushers, and the church quickly filled with dignitaries, all present by invitation only. Throngs of the curious, without invitation, gathered on the street outside, growing to a large crowd by the time the ceremony began.
The Admiral and the Ambassador Page 27