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Deconstruction and Democracy
Continuum Studies in Continental Philosophy

Derrida and Disinterest, Sean Gaston

Heidegger and the Place of Ethics, Michael Lewis

Deconstruction and Democracy
Derrida’s Politics of Friendship
A.J.P. Thomson
Continuum
The Tower Building, 11 York Road, London SE1 7NX
80 Maiden Lane, Suite 704, New York, NY 10038
www.continuumbooks.com

© A.J.P. Thomson 2005

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any
form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or
any information storage or retrieval systems, without prior permission in writing from the
publishers.

First published 2005

Paperback edition 2007

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN-10: HB: 0-8264-7577-9

PB: 0-8264-9989-9
ISBN-13: HB: 978-0-8264-7577-0
PB: 978-0-8264-9989-9

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.

Typeset by Fakenham Photosetting Limited, Fakenham, Norfolk

Printed and bound in Great Britain by Biddles Ltd, King’s Lynn
 Contents
Acknowledgements vi

Abbreviations vii

Introduction 1

Part 1: Deconstruction and Democracy 9

1. No Democracy without Deconstruction? 12
2. Deconstruction and Liberal Democracy 31
3. Deconstruction and Radical Democracy 41

Part 2: Deconstruction as Political Practice 55

4. Deconstruction and Philosophical Nationalism 58
5. The Politics of Exemplarity: Derrida and Heidegger 74
6. Hospitality and the Cosmopolitical 89

Part 3: Politics against Ethics 101

7. Economy of Violence: Derrida and Levinas 104
8. Against Community 122

Part 4: Deconstruction and Depoliticization 145

9. The Spectrality of Politics 148
10. Depoliticization and Repoliticization 161
11. The Politics of Spectrality 174
12. Deconstruction and Depoliticization 185

Conclusion 198

Notes 203

Bibliography 214

Index 223
 Acknowledgements
Most of the work of which this book consists was completed in 2001 at
the University of Edinburgh. I am grateful to the Arts and Humanities
Research Board of the British Academy, and to my parents, for financial
support during the research from which it developed. The first germination
of this work was overseen by Geoffrey Bennington, and its fuller develop-
ment by Cairns Craig. I also owe a debt to the teaching of Penny Fielding
and others at the University of Edinburgh and to Darrow Schecter and
Céline Surprenant at the University of Sussex. Derek Attridge and Penny
Fielding provided invaluable comments and advice on an earlier version
of this material, and Ernesto Laclau lent his encouragement in the search
for a publisher. I am particularly grateful to my friends and colleagues
Alice Ferrebe, Robert Irvine, Adrian Lear, Anne Longmuir, Gavin Miller,
Kathryn Nicol, Matthew Reason and David Towsey, for their moral support
and intellectual fellowship during the writing of this work, and to Catherine
Bromley for the same, and much more, since. I am grateful to Verso for
permission to quote from their translation of Derrida’s Politics of Friendship,
by George Collins.
 Abbreviations
WORKS BY JACQUES DERRIDA

A DI Adieu: to Emmanuel Levinas, trans. Pascale Anne-Brault and

Michael Naas, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999. / Adieu:
à Emmanuel Levinas, Paris: Galilée, 1997.
A LT Altérités, (with Pierre-Jean Labarrière) Paris: Osiris, 1986.
DAP ‘Remarks on Deconstruction and Pragmatism’, trans. Simon
Critchley, in Chantal Mouffe (ed.), Deconstruction and Pragmatism,
London: Routledge, 1996, pp. 77–88.
DIS Dissemination, trans. Barbara Johnson, London: Athlone, 1982.
/ La Dissémination, Collection Points, Série Essais, Paris: Seuil,
1993.
DP Du Droit à la philosophie, Paris: Galilée, 1990.
FOL ‘Force of Law: The “Mystical Foundation of Authority” ’, trans.
Mary Quaintance, in Drucilla Cornell et al. (eds), Deconstruction
and the Possibility of Justice, London: Routledge, 1992, pp. 3–67.
/ Force de loi: ‘ le Fondement mystique de l’autorité ’, Paris: Galilée,
1994.
GES I ‘Geschlecht I: Sexual Difference, Ontological Difference’, trans.
Ruben Berezdivin, in Peggy Kamuf (ed.), A Derrida Reader:
Between the Blinds, Hemel Hempstead: Harvester, 1991, pp. 380–
402. / ‘Geschlecht I: Différence sexuelle, différence ontologique’,
Psyché: Inventions de l’autre, Paris: Galilée, 1987, pp. 395–414.
GES II ‘Geschlecht II: Heidegger’s Hand’, trans. John P. Leavey Jr,
in John Sallis (ed.), Deconstruction and Philosophy, Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1987, pp. 161–96. / ‘La Main de
Heidegger (Geschlecht II)’, Psyché: Inventions de l’autre, Paris:
Galilée, 1987, pp. 415–51.
GES IV ‘Philopolemology: Heidegger’s Ear (Geschlecht IV)’, trans.
John P. Leavey Jr, in John Sallis (ed.), Reading Heidegger:
Commemorations, Bloomington: Indiana University Press,
1993, pp. 163–218. / Politiques de l’amitié, Paris: Galilée, 1994,
pp. 341–419.
G OD The Gift of Death, trans. David Wills, Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 1995. / Donner La Mort, Paris: Galilée,
1999.
GRA Of Grammatology, trans. Gayatri Spivak, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins
University Press, 1976. / De la grammatologie, Paris: Minuit,
1967.
viii Abbreviations

HOS Of Hospitality, (with Anne Dufourmantelle) trans. Rachel Bowlby,

Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000. / De l’ hospitalité,
Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 1997.
KJG ‘Interpretations at War: Kant, the Jew, the German’, trans. Moshe
Ron, New Literary History, 22 (1991–2), pp. 39–95.
LJF ‘Letter to a Japanese Friend’, trans. David Wood and Andrew
Benjamin, in Peggy Kamuf (ed.), A Derrida Reader: Between the
Blinds, Hemel Hempstead: Harvester, 1991, pp. 270–6. / ‘Lettre
à un ami Japonais’, Psyché: Inventions de l’autre, Paris: Galilée,
1987, pp. 387–93.
M AR Margins of Philosophy, trans. Alan Bass, Brighton: Harvester,
1982. / Marges de la Philosophie, Paris: Minuit, 1972.
MON Monolingualism of the Other, trans. Patrick Mensah, Stanford:
Stanford University Press, 1995. / Le Monolinguisme de l’autre,
Paris: Galilée, 1996.
OH The Other Heading, trans. Pascale Anne-Brault and Michael
Naas, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989. / L’autre cap,
Paris: Minuit, 1991.
ONH ‘Onto-Theology of National Humanism: Prolegomena to a
Hypothesis’, trans. Geoffrey Bennington, Oxford Literary Review,
14 (1992), pp. 3–23.
OS Of Spirit, trans. Geoffrey Bennington and Rachel Bowlby, Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1992. / De l’esprit, Paris: Galilée, 1987.
PAS ‘Passions’, trans. David Wood, in Thomas Dutoit (ed.), On the
Name, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1995, pp. 3–31. /
Passions, Paris: Galilée, 1993.
PC The Post Card, trans. Alan Bass, Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1987. / La Carte Postale, Paris: Aubier-Flammarion, 1980.
PM Papier Machine, Paris: Galilée, 2001.
POF Politics of Friendship, trans. George Collins, London: Verso, 1997.
/ Politiques de l’amitié, Paris: Galilée, 1994.
POF(a) ‘Politics of Friendship’, trans. Gabriel Motzkin, The Journal of
Philosophy, 85: 11 (1988), pp. 632–44.
POF(b) ‘Politics of Friendship’, trans. Gabriel Motzkin et al., American
Imago, 50: 3 (1993), pp. 353–91.
POI Points.. ., Interviews 1974–1994, trans. Peggy Kamuf et al., in
Elizabeth Weber (ed.), Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1995.
/ Points de suspension: Entretiens, ed. Elizabeth Weber, Paris:
Galilée, 1992.
PSY ‘Psyche: Inventions of the Other’, in Lindsay Waters and Wlad
Godzich (eds), Reading de Man Reading, Minneapolis: University
of Minnesota Press, 1989, pp. 25–65. / ‘Psyché: Inventions de
l’autre’, in Psyché: Inventions de l’autre, Paris: Galilée, 1987,
pp. 11–61.
 Abbreviations ix

RM ‘The Retrait of Metaphor’, trans. F. Gadsner et al., in Julian

Wolfreys (ed.), The Derrida Reader, Edinburgh: Edinburgh
University Press, 1998, pp. 102–29. / ‘Le retrait de la métaphore’,
Psyché: Inventions de l’autre, Paris: Galilée, 1987, pp. 63–93.
SOM Specters of Marx, trans. Peggy Kamuf, London: Routledge, 1994.
/ Spectres de Marx, Paris: Galilée, 1993.
SPI Of Spirit, trans. Geoffrey Bennington and Rachel Bowlby, Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1992. / De l’esprit, Paris: Galilée, 1987.
SST ‘Some statements and truisms about neologisms, newisms, pos-
tisms, parasitisms, and other small seisms’, trans. Anne Tomiche,
in David Carroll (ed.), The States of Theory, New York: Columbia
University Press, 1990, pp. 63–94.
VM ‘Violence et Métaphysique: Essai sur la pensée d’Emmanuel
Levinas’, La Revue de Métaphysique et Morale, 3 & 4 (1964),
pp. 322–54 & 425–73.
WD Writing and Difference, trans Alan Bass, London: Routledge,
1981. / L’ écriture et la difference, Collection Points, Série Essais,
Paris: Seuil, 1979.

OTHER WORKS
CP Carl Schmitt, The Concept of the Political, trans. George Schwab,
New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1976.
ED Simon Critchley, The Ethics of Deconstruction, Oxford: Blackwell,
1992.
HSS Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, Hegemony and Socialist
Strategy, London: Verso, 1986.
LR Emmanuel Levinas, The Levinas Reader, ed. Séan Hand, Oxford:
Blackwell, 1989.
ND Carl Schmitt, ‘The Age of Neutralizations and Depoliticizations’,
trans. Matthias Konzell and John. E. McCormick, Telos, 96
(1993), pp. 130–142.
NE Aristotle, The Nicomachean Ethics, trans. David Ross, revised J. L.
Ackrill and J. O. Urmson, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998.
OB Emmanuel Levinas, Otherwise than Being: Or Beyond Essence,
trans. Alphonso Lingis, Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University
Press, 1998. / Autrement qu’ être ou au-delà de l’essence, le Livre de
Poche, Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2001.
QT Martin Heidegger, ‘The Question Concerning Technology’,
trans. William Lovitt, in David Farrell Krell (ed.), Basic Writings,
London: Routledge, 1987, pp. 287–317.
TI Emmanuel Levinas, Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority,
trans. Alphonso Lingis, Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University
x Abbreviations

Press, 1999. / Totalité et Infini: Essai sur l’extériorité, le Livre de

Poche, Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1996.

NOTE ON TRANSLATIONS
I have made no changes to the published translations of the texts cited.
Unless otherwise stated, all emphases are those of the original texts.
 Introduction
Derrida claimed in 1994 that deconstruction is ‘literally the most ethical
and political way of taking seriously what is implied by the very concepts of
decision and responsibility’.1 In another interview, given three years earlier,
he states that deconstruction follows an exigency ‘without [which], in my
view no ethico-political question has any chance of being opened up or
awakened today’ [POI 364 / 375]. More forceful still are the remarks in
Politics of Friendship, the most extensive political work of Derrida’s career,
which identify deconstruction with democracy itself. For Derrida com-
ments that there is a ‘self-deconstructive [auto-déconstructrice] force in the
very motif of democracy, the possibility and the duty for democracy itself
to de-limit itself. Democracy is the autos of deconstructive self-delimitation
[auto-délimitation]’ [POF 105 / 129]. On the one hand, deconstruction is to
be found at work within democracy; on the other, democracy itself is already
inscribed within deconstruction. Or as Derrida puts it in more telegraphic
fashion: ‘no deconstruction without democracy, no democracy without
deconstruction’ [POF 105 / 128].
There are at least two reasons why such an apparently hyperbolic claim for
deconstruction might come as a surprise, even to a reader well-acquainted
with Derrida’s work. Firstly, because despite the consistently political and
polemical reception of his work Derrida refused for a long time to bow to
the insistent demand that his work should take political positions. In an
interview with Richard Kearney conducted in 1981 Derrida comments
that ‘I have never succeeded in directly relating deconstruction to existing
political codes and programmes.’2 Secondly, not only did Derrida refuse to
elaborate his own understanding of the political implications of his writing
for many years, but the word ‘deconstruction’ itself has a complex history,
and he has regularly refused to grant any particular privilege to the term as
a description of his work. In a famous attempt to come to terms with the
word ‘deconstruction’, his ‘Letter to a Japanese Friend’ dated 10 July 1983,
Derrida expresses a certain amount of dissatisfaction with the word ‘decon-
struction’. It ‘imposed itself upon me’ [LJF 270 / 388], Derrida complains,
and ‘has never appeared satisfactory to me’ [LJF 272 / 390]: ‘I do not think,
[. . .] that it is a good word’ [LJF 275 / 392]. If Derrida feels able to risk a
comment such as ‘no democracy without deconstruction’, one implication
must be that over a decade his attitude to both politics and to the use of the
term deconstruction must have altered.
My aim in this book is to explain and evaluate Derrida’s linking of decon-
struction to democracy. Coming to terms with Derrida’s understanding of
this relationship will mean not only having to account for his use of ‘democ-
racy’, but also his use of ‘deconstruction’. That his identification of the two
2 Deconstruction and Democracy

occurs in the course of a ‘genealogical deconstruction of the political (and

through it to the democratic), [through which] one would seek to think,
interpret and implement another politics, another democracy’ [POF 104 /
128] has the consequence that: ‘at stake would thus be a deconstruction of
the genealogical schema, a paradoxical deconstruction – a deconstruction at
once genealogical and a-genealogical, of the genealogical’ [POF 105 / 128].
In other words, neither democracy nor deconstruction can escape their
encounter unscathed.
What I hope to achieve is the demonstration that contrary to the common
misconception, Derrida’s work has a major contribution to make to our
understanding of politics. This is not as controversial an argument as it
might once have been. But if the caricature of deconstruction as an apo-
litical textualism is receding, it is being replaced with new myths. Thomas
McCarthy is typical when he argues that Derrida’s writings can only give
rise to a ‘politics of the ineffable’. A more sympathetic reader such as Simon
Critchley makes what is broadly the same complaint when he asks ‘might
one not ultimately speak of a refusal of politics in Derrida’s work?’ Yet it is
at the very least plausible that the hyperbole and hysteria attendant on the
dissemination of Derrida’s work in the English-speaking world has stemmed
not from the lack of a political dimension, but from the fact that the political
implications of deconstruction are so excessive and disconcerting as to be
almost unrecognizable.
What critics of deconstruction have failed to account for are the ways in
which Derrida’s work upsets the distinctions with which we customarily
approach the analysis of politics: for example, between theory and prac-
tice. McCarthy, following closely the attack on Derrida made by Jürgen
Habermas in his Philosophical Discourse of Modernity, argues that Derrida’s
work – while broadly political in scope – leads to a ‘politics of the ineffable’.3
He takes what he calls ‘Derrida’s withdrawal from the specificity of politics
or of empirical social research’ to be evidence of a retreat to theology or
mysticism.4 Derrida’s key terms are ‘elastic,’ ‘vague’ and ‘ambiguous’ and
his ‘notion of a “grammar” of responsibility is at best an airy abstraction’.5
Having reduced Derrida’s work to a ‘philosophicopolitical’ programme or
system, McCarthy wonders: ‘is it the case, as Nancy Fraser has put it, that
the politics of deconstruction amounts to little more than the deconstruction
of politics?’6 The interest of McCarthy’s thesis here is that Simon Critchley,
a less impatient reader, reaches essentially the same conclusion in his Ethics
of Deconstruction, asking:

is there not an implicit refusal of the ontic, the factical, and the empir-
ical – that is to say, of the space of doxa, where politics takes place in a
field of antagonism, decision, dissension and struggle? In this sense,
might one not ultimately speak of a refusal of politics in Derrida’s work?
[ED 200]
 Introduction 3

This argument is circular. Critchley and McCarthy are only able to

condemn deconstruction for failing to generate a political practice by pre-
suming a distinction between theory and practice which is unsustainable
from Derrida’s perspective.
The form of this misunderstanding is set out clearly by Geoffrey
Bennington, whose Legislations: The Politics of Deconstruction contains
detailed refutations of many of the attacks made on Derrida’s work, a
defence updated more recently by Morag Patrick in Derrida, Responsibility
and Politics.7 As Bennington suggests in his more recent book Interrupting
Derrida, ‘the political demand made of Derrida by a variety of commen-
tators is the demand for the concept “politics” to be placed in the very
transcendental position it is self-righteously supposed to reduce and explain,
but to which it remains blind’.8 By presuming to know in advance what
politics is, or ought to be, these critics are not only unable to read Derrida’s
work without interposing their own preconceptions, but end up blind to the
movement of politics itself. From Derrida’s point of view, not only is the
deconstructive questioning of politics neither a simple rejection of politics
nor of traditional thought, but it is the necessary precondition for thinking
about politics at all.
Such a claim seems over the top because it is tempting to assume that
when Derrida insists on the value of deconstruction he must be recom-
mending his own work, and in effect making a monstrous claim for the
unique importance of his thought. However, as he makes clear in ‘Letter
to a Japanese Friend’, Derrida considers the term deconstruction to be first
of all a translation of two prominent words in the philosophy of Martin
Heidegger, Abbau and Destruktion [LJF 270 / 388].9 In Of Grammatology
for example, Derrida speaks of ‘deconstruction’ when he describes his
own work, with that of Nietzsche and Heidegger, as ‘inhabiting [. . .] in a
certain way’ the concepts of Western thought [GRA 24 / 39]. While Derrida
rarely appears as closely allied to Heidegger as he does in the first part of
Of Grammatology we cannot ignore the fact that the word ‘deconstruction’
must remain marked with at least a minimal reference to its translation from
the work of Heidegger.10 In which case, Derrida’s emphasis on the impor-
tance of deconstruction to politics must be something other than mere
self-aggrandizement, if only because he presents himself not as an originator,
but as a follower and interpreter. Indeed translations of Heidegger into both
French and English now use the term without any reference to Derrida.11
Although Derrida does use deconstruction in places as a name for his own
theoretical practice, he insists that it be considered as simply one in a series
of terms which he has made use of in his work. It is only one word among
others:

For me, for what I have tried and still try to write, the word has interest
only within a certain context, where it replaces and lets itself be determined
4 Deconstruction and Democracy

by such other words as ‘écriture’, ‘trace’, ‘différance’, ‘supplement’, ‘hymen’,

‘pharmakon’, ‘marge’, ‘entame’, ‘parergon’, etc. By definition the list can
never be closed. [LJF 275 / 392]

All these words – which Rodolphe Gasché labels ‘infrastructures’ in his The
Tain of the Mirror and which it has become commonplace to call ‘quasi-
transcendentals’ – operate within particular texts of Derrida’s in broadly
comparable ways. ‘Deconstruction’ is one word among the others on the
list – some of which are borrowed from other texts, some of which are
neologisms suggested by the structure which Derrida has found at work in
the text under consideration – rather than the transcendental guarantor of
the list’s identity. ‘Deconstruction’ is an example of ‘the trace’ as much as
‘the trace’ is an example of ‘deconstruction’.
Moreover, although deconstruction may be used as a convenient name of
this series of terms, it can be misleading as a label for Derrida’s work as a
whole, which is not to be considered ‘an analysis or a critique’, nor a ‘method’,
‘an act or an operation’ [LJF 273 / 390–1]. Instead, and this third meaning
is the one to which Derrida will attach most importance, deconstruction is
what happens: ‘deconstruction takes place everywhere it [ça] takes place,
where there is something (and is not therefore limited to meaning or the text
in the current and bookish sense of the word)’ [LJF 274 / 391]. If decon-
struction is oriented towards what happens – towards the world and not
away from it – it is clear that any abstraction or withdrawal from concrete
political reality must take place according to a complex logic.
Given this complex linguistic background, the use of deconstruction
in the statement ‘no democracy without deconstruction’, as in the related
claim that ‘deconstruction is justice’ [FOL 15 / 35. Emphasis only in French]
appears somewhat ambiguous, to say the least. It might certainly be said to
add a new dimension to our understanding of the word ‘deconstruction’.
My hypothesis is that Derrida’s apparently greater ease with his own use of
the word might be profitably linked to two other significant mutations in
the trajectory of his work. Firstly it can be compared with an increasingly
explicit thematic attention to overtly political questions. There is a qualita-
tive shift between Derrida’s political work prior to the period I am interested
in – focused largely around the question of the proper name12 and the insti-
tution of the university13 – and essays such as those on Nelson Mandela and
racism collected in Psyché (1987) or the project of his seminar on philosophy
and nationalism (1983–7). This shift towards political themes culminates
in the publication of Politics of Friendship in 1994, which recapitulates and
develops many of the concerns of this period in Derrida’s work.
Secondly, Derrida’s attitude towards his own role as a public intellectual
appears to have changed. Despite a reluctance earlier in his career even to
allow photographs of himself to be published, since the middle of the 1980s
Derrida has appeared regularly to give interviews on radio and television, as
 Introduction 5

well as in newspapers and scholarly journals, at least five volumes of which

have been published since Positions (1972): Points de Suspensions (1992),
Echographies: de la télévision (1996), Sur Parole (1999), Negotiations (2002),
De Quoi Demain (2001). Derrida’s political interventions, which had previ-
ously been largely focused on the educational establishment, have expanded
to include public debate on a wide variety of issues. These political activi-
ties cannot be considered as simply extrinsic, or contingent to the political
development of Derrida’s work. To reduce Derrida’s work to a set of theses
and then claim to deduce its politics on that basis, as Thomas McCarthy
does, must miss the extent to which the politics of deconstruction are bound
up with its form and practice.14 As Geoffrey Bennington has suggested, we
should read Derrida’s ‘more or less visible interventions in concrete political
situations’ as ‘not merely the circumstantial acts of a philosopher elsewhere,
and more importantly, developing theories or knowledge, but continuous
with each act of deconstruction from the start’.15 Derrida has been insisting
on this since beginning his 1968 paper ‘The Ends of Man’ with the axiom
that ‘every philosophical colloquium necessarily has a political significance’
[M AR 111 / 131]. In an interview given in 1977 Derrida affirmed this claim:
‘philosophical activity does not require a political practice; it is, in any case,
a political practice’ [POI 69–70 / 74]. Deconstruction must be understood as
both a philosophico-political practice that implies a correlative theory and
as a philosophico-political theory whose elaboration is coterminous with its
consequent political practice.
It is only once we appreciate deconstruction as a political practice in and
of itself, I suggest, that we can evaluate the contribution to be made by
deconstruction to political theory or to the analysis of politics. Such a shift
in focus also has consequences for how we read and respond to Derrida’s
work, and highlights a methodological concern of this book.
If we take seriously Derrida’s problematization of the relationship between
singularity and the general, we can neither reduce his work to the expression
of some fundamental thesis of deconstruction nor consider it to be a set of
absolutely heterogeneous and singular operations. It has become common,
following Rodolphe Gasché’s influential The Tain of the Mirror, to con-
sider Derrida’s work in terms of a quasi-systematicity which recognizes this
problem. On this account Derrida’s texts form a series of interventions in
particular contexts in which much the same thing happens each time; the
texts throw up a series of apparently transcendental terms on the basis of
which it is possible to rethink traditional philosophical problems, but which
also put their own transcendental status into question. Gasché calls these
terms ‘infrastructures’ but it has become more usual to refer to them as ‘quasi-
transcendentals’.16 The difficulty of this approach is that it can only accom-
modate a rather reductive sense of the internal historicity of Derrida’s work.
As Derrida insists in his ‘Remarks on Deconstruction and Pragmatism’,
his earlier work is a necessary precondition for later developments; this
6 Deconstruction and Democracy

should serve to remind us that deconstruction is also an attempt to take

seriously the empirical historical inscription of any theoretical discourse.
For Gasché, the development of Derrida’s work is to be considered at best
contingent to its philosophical rigour, and at worst in teleological terms;
we can only understand the later work on the basis of the earlier texts in
which Derrida’s own philosophical inheritance is more explicit. However,
Derrida himself – and this remains entirely consistent with his rejection of
teleology – has insisted that his earlier ‘more academic or philosophically
more reassuring’ texts were an ‘irreversibly necessary condition’ for what
followed; their necessity however is not logical, that of ‘a fundamental or
foundational’ condition [DAP 79].
Rather, I suggest, we should read Derrida’s work in the manner in which
he reads. By suspending the traditional or metaphysical conception of the
history of an author’s work – in which the work unfolds a central thesis
or applies a method; in which the earlier work prepares for the later or in
which the later work occludes the profound insights of the earlier; in terms
of decisive breaks or revisions – we must develop other ways of assessing the
development, the mutations and the continuities, of the discursive strategies
within his work.17 This requires careful attention not only to the systema-
ticity of the texts, but also a persistent attention to the features of each work
which resist incorporation into such a history.
Moreover, by reducing the occasion of Derrida’s work to the philosoph-
ical issue to which he refers, Gasché obliterates any sense of a connection
between Derrida’s work and its other contexts. While there can be no ques-
tion of reducing Derrida’s work to a symptomatic expression or product of
a particular political context, recognizing the internal heterogeneity and
planes of consistency of that work must include some sense both of the
relationship each text negotiates with the other works signed by Derrida,
and of those so-called external (political, social, historical) contexts which
are inscribed into Derrida’s work as the occasion for each text. Richard
Beardsworth’s Derrida and the Political is a good example of the pitfalls
of a relatively systematic and philosophical approach.18 As Bennington has
argued, the clarity and authority of Beardsworth’s argument is bought at the
price of a number of key reductive decisions, and deconstruction is reduced
to a set of theses about ‘the aporia of time’.19 Moreover, for Beardsworth,
deconstruction appears to be largely a philosophical response to philo-
sophical problems, and as an almost dialectical resolution of a set of political
antinomies between Kant and Hegel, and between Heidegger and Levinas.
Yet a brief consideration of the performative context of even a short text
such as ‘History of the Lie: Prolegomena’ suggests that its political dimension
extends beyond the philosophical.20 Aside from its more typical Derridean
concerns – with the relationship between the concepts of history and truth,
with Nietzsche, with the fable, with performative or illocutionary force,
with secrecy and testimony – the essay is directly linked to some central
 Introduction 7

concerns of Politics of Friendship and can be read as a lengthy gloss on some

elliptical comments made in the final chapter on ‘history qua fraternization,
which begins in a non-truth and should end up making non-truth true [. . .]
a history of truth. A matter, more precisely, of a trial of verification, qua the
history of a becoming-true of illusion’ [POF 274 / 305]. Nor can the public
performance and subsequent publication of the paper, or the broadcast of
a radio interview extending the discussion, be strictly demarcated from the
political context written into the paper.21 Presented in New York, and first
published in the Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal of the New School for
Social Research, the paper locates itself as one of a series of texts concerned
with the truth written or published in New York: an essay on truth and
politics by Alexandre Koyré written in exile during the Second World War;
Hannah Arendt’s ‘Truth and Politics,’ published in the New Yorker; an inac-
curate article published in the New York Times accusing Derrida and other
French intellectuals of a failure to acknowledge the ‘truth’ of the persecu-
tion of Jews in Vichy France; a letter in response to this article which draws
attention to Derrida’s signature on a petition to President Mitterand calling
for precisely such a public recognition of French responsibility for these
crimes. As Derrida himself argued on another occasion against similar accu-
sations, ‘the text is always a field of forces, heterogeneous, differential, open
[. . .]. That’s why deconstructive readings and writings are [. . .] also effective
or active (as one says) interventions, in particular, political and institutional
interventions’.22 Given both the internal historicity and the performative
force of Derrida’s texts as political interventions, we should not be too quick
to conclude where their philosophical or political significance lies.
There are generally three strategies available when considering a concept
such as ‘responsibility’ in Derrida’s work. The first is to locate Derrida’s
treatment of the concept alongside a set of previous philosophical responses
to the same problem within the philosophical tradition that Derrida appears
to be working in; the second is to compare or relate his work to philo-
sophical contexts to which he does not explicitly refer; the third assumes
that his work advances more-or-less philosophical arguments which can
be abstracted from a particular context and repeated independently of the
project of reading within which they may have arisen. Keith Peterson’s
reading of Derrida’s work on responsibility and decision in relation to Hegel,
Nietzsche and Heidegger fits the first model; Ernesto Laclau and Chantal
Mouffe’s attempt to relate Derrida on responsibility to Wittgenstein on
decisions and rule-following fits the second; Geoffrey Bennington’s work
on unpacking Derrida’s ‘deceptively simple’ arguments tends towards the
third.23 None of these strategies is in itself inappropriate; in combination
with each other they can yield powerful and perceptive responses. In this
book I have tended to follow the third strategy, with some consideration of
the other two; but by balancing these with a sense of the internal historicity
and performative context and address of Derrida’s work I have attempted to
8 Deconstruction and Democracy

generate a distinctive response to the question of the politics of deconstruc-

tion. The key text throughout is Politics of Friendship, a largely neglected
text among the commentary available on Derrida’s recent writings: perhaps
because of its complexity, the awkwardness of the seminar format in which
it is presented, or simply because of its length. I do not attempt to argue for
the centrality of this text in Derrida’s recent work – although I think such an
argument might be convincingly made – but take the work as a provisional
starting point.
In choosing to focus on a particular period within the development of
Derrida’s work, and to focus on those texts which contribute most to the
analysis of the theme with which I am concerned, my argument risks cir-
cularity; but I take this to be a necessary risk, and a risk that may be the
chance of a productive reading – a reading that manages to follow without
repeating.24 Even if we must not try to predict the coming of the other, we
must prepare for it as best we can, writes Derrida in ‘Psyche: Inventions
of the Other’: ‘Letting the other come is not an inertia open to anything
whatsoever [. . .]. But one does not make the other come, one lets it come by
preparing for its coming’ [PSY 55 / 53]. In this sense, I can only hope that
my work will be itself deconstructive; since the other cannot be invented,
‘the initiative or deconstructive inventiveness can consist only in opening,
in uncloseting, destabilizing foreclusionary structures so as to allow for the
passage toward the other’ [PSY 60 / 60].
 Part 1
Deconstruction and Democracy
This page intentionally left blank
 Introduction
If Derrida’s identification of deconstruction with democracy in Politics of
Friendship is startling, the reference to democracy is by no means an isolated
case in Derrida’s work, at least since his reference to ‘the form of democ-
racy’ in ‘The Ends of Man’ [M AR 113–4 / 134–5]. Throughout the texts
contemporaneous with Politics of Friendship there are insistent references to
democracy, and to ‘democracy-to-come’: for example in The Other Heading
[OH 78 / 76], ‘Remarks on Deconstruction and Pragmatism’ [DAP 83–5],
Du Droit à la philosophie [DP 70–1] and Specters of Marx [SOM 169 / 269].
In fact, Derrida offers at least two apparently divergent approaches to the
concept of democracy: one more analytical, the other (apparently) more
historical. It would be hasty to assume that distinct arguments in Derrida’s
work can be moulded into a cohesive unity, so in order to respect the het-
erogeneity of these texts, and for clarity, I will look at these two arguments
separately.
The first is the question of ‘democracy-to-come’ which dominates Politics
of Friendship, and in the first chapter I will discuss the main framework of
that book, focusing on Derrida’s analysis of the concept of friendship and its
relation to democracy. This opens up a provisional understanding of what
Derrida means by ‘democracy-to-come’ which the remainder of this book
will be concerned to flesh out. The conceptual bias of Derrida’s argument in
Politics of Friendship may seem abstract: in the second chapter I will look at
ways we might relate the argument to the context of the liberal democratic
state. Here Derrida’s other approach to the problem of democracy can be
helpful, starting from the question of literature and leading to questions of
freedom of speech, censorship, the secret and the distinction between the
public and private sphere. However, Derrida’s criticisms of a liberal under-
standing of democracy can also be extended to an alternative tradition of
radical democratic thought, as I argue in the third chapter.
This makes deconstruction hard to situate politically, and so we might
proceed with the following questions in mind: Does deconstruction finish in
democracy? Is Derrida’s appeal to ‘democracy-to-come’ to be considered an
end to the question of the politics of deconstruction, the political product or
outcome of Derrida’s thought? Or is democracy perhaps a familiar name on
an unfamiliar path; not a necessary conclusion to the deconstructive project
but an example in an ongoing argument concerning the very nature of poli-
tics?
 1
No Democracy without Deconstruction?
Not only does Politics of Friendship contain the most extended analysis of
‘democracy-to-come’ in Derrida’s work, but the book as a whole can be read
as being determined by the relationship between friendship and democracy.
It is this relationship which will justify Derrida’s assertion that democracy
is deconstructive in its ‘self-delimitation’, a phrase which must be read two
ways at once: democracy acknowledges its own limits, but democracy also
de-limits, it removes limits. Derrida’s interest in friendship is a traditional
one: in The Nicomachean Ethics it is friendship which forms the junction for
Aristotle between the question of justice and that of the proper constitution
of the city, between ethics and politics. It is there that democracy is famously
characterized as a political association modelled on the friendship between
brothers [NE 209–10]. This analogy is invidious in Derrida’s view, and
he seeks to develop the possibility of another reading of politics, of friend-
ship and democracy, which would escape the rhetoric of brotherhood, and
what he calls the logic of fraternization. To do so is to distinguish between
democracy’s limitations and its de-limiting force. That we can have neither
one without the other is characteristic not only of democracy, but also of
deconstruction.
At its broadest, Derrida’s principal concern in Politics of Friendship is ‘to
think and live a friendship, a politics, a justice’ [POF 105 / 128]. Considered
more narrowly, the book is an investigation of the traditional conception of
friendship in political philosophy. A historical survey of texts by several major
political thinkers, from Plato and Aristotle to Jean-Luc Nancy, via Cicero,
Augustine, Montaigne, Nietzsche and Carl Schmitt, among others, is inter-
woven with a discussion and analysis of the recurrent structure and limits
of the concept of friendship in their work. On a third level, and in its most
modest formulation, Derrida’s aim is merely to ask ‘what is meant when one
says “brother”, when someone is called “brother” ’. He is ‘wondering [demande],
that’s all, and request[s] [demande] that it be asked [demande], what the implicit
politics of this language is’ [POF 305 / 339]. On the basis of the first statement
I have offered of his concerns, Politics of Friendship would appear to be the
nearest Derrida’s work will have got to being political philosophy as we usually
understand it – that is if we could ever be sure that this concern wasn’t precisely
the inspiration behind all his books. However we would then have to account
for the two refinements of this aim I have suggested. What kind of political
thought can be organized around the category of friendship? How can an
analysis of the ‘implicit politics’ of language lead us to ‘a politics, a justice’?
 No Democracy without Deconstruction? 13

FRIENDSHIP AND FRATERNIZATION

Politics of Friendship is structured by the discussion of the concept of friend-
ship in the history of Western philosophy. The focus of Derrida’s argument
is the continuity within the concept of friendship from its canonical formu-
lation in Aristotle to contemporary accounts such as those of Bataille and
Blanchot, and crucially, through and in spite of the apparent break in the
tradition inaugurated by Nietzsche. For Derrida this reversal is encapsulated
in Human, All Too Human when Nietzsche overturns the famous aphorism,
attributed to Aristotle, ‘O my friends, there is no friend’: ‘Enemies, there
is no enemy! shout I, the living fool.’1 However, for Derrida, this apparent
reversal is not what it seems to be. Attempting to overturn the established
values and hierarchies of Western thought, Nietzsche succeeds only in
unveiling the conditions of possibility which have always governed and
conditioned that thought: ‘Nietzsche’s upheaval would [. . .] interrupt less
than recall (and call again for) a rupture already inscribed in the speech it
interrupts’ [POF 27 / 45]. The significance of Nietzsche’s work in Politics of
Friendship is not that it introduces something absolutely new to the tradi-
tion of thinking about friendship, but that it exposes a structure that has
always been present within that tradition, in this case, the reversibility of
the relationship between friend and enemy. Or, as Derrida describes it, a
friend could not be my friend if he was not, at least potentially, capable of
being my enemy: ‘the two concepts (friend/enemy) consequently intersect
and ceaselessly change places’ [POF 72 / 91]. In his essay ‘Force of Law’
Derrida asserts that ‘deconstruction is generally practiced in two ways [. . .].
One takes on the demonstrative and apparently ahistorical allure of logico-
formal paradoxes. The other, more historical [. . .], seems to proceed through
readings of texts, meticulous interpretations and genealogies’ [FOL 20 / 48]:
here the name of Nietzsche stands for the focal point at which the structural
analysis of the conditions of possibility and impossibility of the concept of
friendship intersects and interrupts the empirical history of the development
of that concept within Western philosophy.
The classical model from which Derrida begins is that of Aristotle. Yet
he argues that Aristotle’s very definition of friendship is already on the verge
of contradiction. For on the one hand it is characterized by the value of
reciprocity [NE 194] and equality [NE 200–1; 202–3] between those men
who resemble each other [NE 196–7]. These values of equality, reciprocity
and resemblance will also found both justice and the state [NE 192–3;
207–8]. The highest form of friendship is that founded on virtue rather
than pleasure or utility, and on equality; this reciprocity distinguishes true
friendship from that found in the relationship between father and son, man
and wife, ruler and subject or elder and younger [NE 203]. Yet on the other
hand, Aristotle’s account of friendship is interrupted by elements which
threaten the very possibility of this equality in friendship. Firstly, because
for Aristotle friendship is defined by the act of being friends with someone
14 Deconstruction and Democracy

rather than by that of being befriended. Friendship is active. Yet friendship

by definition continues in the absence of the friend, even in the event of
their death. On the basis of a brief reference in the The Eudemian Ethics,
but not The Nichomachean Ethics, Derrida finds within Aristotle what he
(Derrida) had been saying about friendship since Mémoires: For Paul de
Man: that the possibility of the death of the friend inhabits the possibility
of friendship itself.2 If friendship is always a priori potentially asymmetrical,
since my dead friend can never return my friendship, could there ever actu-
ally be a perfect friendship [POF 12–13 / 28–9]? This brings in the second
moment of disturbance in Aristotle’s account. Friendship is premised on
wishing the best for the friend, but the very best would be for the friend to
become a God [NE 204–5]. Three problems follow from this: a God cannot
be a friend, because of his absolute remoteness; friendship is predicated on
loving the other as he is and therefore depends on his remaining human;
God needs no friend because he is self-sufficient [POF 222–3 / 250–2]. On
this account too, even the concept of perfect friendship would be impossible,
because self-contradictory. If friendship founded on equality is impossible,
then friendship must always be irreducibly dissymmetrical.
On this basis Derrida argues that the Greek model of friendship will always
already be inhabited by a more Judaeo-Christian model: ‘a problematic scan-
sion [. . .] would have introduced dissymmetry, separation and infinite distance
in a Greek philía which did not tolerate them but nevertheless called for them’
[POF 232 / 259]. Or in other words that ‘the philosophical horizon of philía
[. . .] carries in its determination, in the very form of its finity qua horizon,
the potential but inexorable injunction of its infinitization, and hence also
that of its Christianization’ [POF 233 / 260]. To grasp the full implications
of Derrida’s argument it is important to stress this dynamic within the text.
Derrida ‘will not follow Nietzsche’, he notes, nor ‘Nietzsche’s sons’ [POF
33 / 51]. On this basis, Derrida’s concerns about friendship would apply at
least as much to the work of his post-Nietzschean contemporaries Bataille,
Blanchot, Levinas and Nancy as to Aristotle and Montaigne. Both the final
section of the book, and several explicit comments within the text, make this
clear [POF 293–305 / 325–38; 46 n.15 / 56–7 n.1]. So I cannot agree with
John Caputo who asserts that Derrida’s model is ‘largely inspired by [. . .] his
Jewish friends’ Levinas and Blanchot.3 Simon Critchley’s account of the text
is similarly misleading since he attributes ‘a crucial place in [the] exposition
and argumentation’ of Politics of Friendship to Blanchot.4 Derrida’s analysis
must apply to both the Greco-Roman and the Judaeo-Christian model of
friendship and a crucial change between the earliest versions of the text
and its final publication reinforces this point. Discussing the rupture in the
concept of friendship, what is phrased as a question in the earlier texts – ‘shall
one say that this fracture is Judeo-Christian?’ [POF(a) 644; POF(b) 385]
– becomes a statement: ‘one can no longer speak here of a simple fracture and
say that it is Judaeo-Christian’ [POF 293 / 325].
Discovering Diverse Content Through
Random Scribd Documents
 In Mr. Scott’s study were many hundred valuable books, some of
which are very rare, and a great collection of curios. One of the walls
was hung with old prints of noted theatrical people of earlier
generations; another with fine china. The room was richly furnished
and had an air of oriental luxury which, combined with picturesque
disorder, was more than charming—it was bewilderingly bewitching.
In one corner was an interesting souvenir in a frame; his first letter
of credential as dramatic critic, and was given by the Sunday Times,
with which he was first connected; he went to the Telegraph in
1872.
Mr. Scott was playwright as well as critic and had several plays
successfully produced—“Tears, Idle Tears,” an adaptation from
Marcel; “Peril,” taken from Sardou’s “Nos Intimes,” “Diplomacy,”
written in collaboration with B. C. Stephenson; “Sister Mary,” of
which Wilson Barrett was part author; “Jack in the Box” (with
George R. Sims); “The Cape Mail,” “Serge Panine,” adapted from
Georges Ohnet for Mrs. Langtry, “The Swordsman’s Daughter,” in
which Brandon Thomas had a hand and “Denise,” in collaboration
with Sir Augustus Harris. Among his published books are “Round
About the Islands”; “Poppyland”; “Pictures of the World”; “Among
the Apple Orchards”; “Over the Hills and Far away”; “The Land of
Flowers”; “Thirty Years at the Play”; “Dramatic Table Talk”; “The
Wheel of Life”; “Lays of a Londoner”; “Lays and Lyrics”; “Theatrical
Addresses” and his famous “Patriot Songs.”
 XIX
TACT

An Important Factor of Success.—Better than Diplomacy.—Some Noted

Possessors of Tact.—James G. Blaine.—King Edward VII.—Queen
Alexandra.—Henry Ward Beecher.—Mme. Patti.—Mrs. Ronalds.—
Mrs. Cleveland—Mrs. Langtry.—Colonel Ingersoll.—Mrs. Kendall.—
General Sherman.—Chauncey M. Depew.—Mrs. James Brown
Potter.—Mme. Nordica.

I have had the good fortune to meet a great many distinguished

people, and the misfortune of hearing many of these talked of
afterward as if human greatness was merely a machine, which had
some peculiar secret of motion. I don’t like to listen to analyses of
my friends and acquaintances; it is too much like vivisection; it is
unkind to the subject and hardens whoever conducts the operation.
Besides, I have a theory of my own as to greatness. It is that tact
is generally the secret. Almost all famous men and women admit
that certain other people are superior to them at their own special
work. They will attribute some of their success to luck and some to
accident, but the close observer can usually see that tact has had far
more influence than either, for success depends largely on getting
along well with other people, and nothing but tact can assure this.
Diplomacy alone cannot take the place of tact, for it comes only
from the head; tact is from the heart. The prominent people to
whom I refer did not lack great qualities of head; they would have
failed without them, but these alone would have been insufficient
without the softer sense—“The inmost one,” as Hawthorne named it;
the quality to which Oliver Wendell Holmes referred when he said
—“I am getting in by the side door.” Diplomacy, as distinguished
from tact, is something with a string to it: or playing for a place; tact
is a subtle, timely touch from the heart.
A few years ago I returned from Europe on the steamer with Mr.
James G. Blaine. Every one on board wanted to talk with him and
learn of things which taste and prudence forbade his mentioning. Yet
Mr. Blaine was so tactful throughout this ordeal, that no one suffered
a rebuff and every one became his friend. He went further by
discovering the good but shrinking people who in a great ship
became isolated, and bringing them into the general company and
conversation. Yet all the while he was a model to many other
married men on board by his constant and knightly courtesy to his
own wife.
I have referred elsewhere to the tact of King Edward VII of Great
Britain, the most popular sovereign in Europe. This quality is not
restricted to public purposes; his acquaintances know that it is
untiringly exercised for the benefit of Queen Alexandra, of whose
deafness he is never unmindful. Often, when I had the honor to
entertain the royal family and their friends, it was my duty to face
the King (then Prince of Wales). Sometimes this placed me—
embarrassingly too, with my back to the greater part of the
audience. But the Prince was regardless of custom and his own royal
prerogative, when his consort’s enjoyment was endangered; on one
occasion when he saw that the Princess was not hearing me
distinctly, he said softly to me, “Mr. Wilder, kindly turn your face
toward the Princess!”
And Her Royal Highness is as tactful as he. The audience at a
special entertainment given the Shah of Persia in London included
the most distinguished and wealthy people in the city. I was among
those engaged to entertain the Shah, beside whom sat the Princess
(now Queen Alexandra). As His Persian Majesty was ignorant of the
English language it was not strange that he held his programme
upside down. This might have occasioned a laugh and caused the
Shah some mortification had not the Princess deftly turned her own
programme upside down and kept it so during the performance.
 “The Shah held His Program Upside Down.”

One of the “nerviest” illustrations of tact is to the credit of Henry

Ward Beecher. After the war, he made a lecture tour of the South
and appeared at Mozart Hall, Richmond, with an address entitled,
“The North and The South.” He was rather doubtful as to the
reception he would have but he knew what he wanted and was
determined to get it. No applause welcomed him as he appeared on
the platform, but a few hisses were heard in the gallery. In the
better rows of seats were some grim ex-Confederates—General
Fitzhugh Lee, General Rosser, ex-Governor Smith, Governor Cameron
and others. Beecher fixed his eye directly on Lee and said—(I quote
a newspaper report of the incident):
 “I have seen pictures of General Fitzhugh Lee, sir, and I assume
you are the man. Am I right?”
The General, slightly taken back by this direct address, nodded
stiffly, while the audience bent forward, breathless with curiosity as
to what was going to follow.
“Then,” said Mr. Beecher, his face lighting up, “I want to offer you
this right hand, which, in its own way, fought against you and yours,
years ago, but which I would now willingly sacrifice to make the
sunny South prosperous and happy. Will you take it, General?” There
was a moment’s hesitation, a moment of deathlike stillness in the
hall, and then Fitzhugh Lee was on his feet, his hand was extended
across the footlights and was quickly met by the warm grasp of the
preacher’s. At first there was a murmur, half of surprise and half of
doubtfulness from the audience, then there was a hesitating
clapping of hands, and before Beecher had unloosed the hand of
Robert E. Lee’s nephew, there were cheers such as were never
before heard in old Mozart, though it had been the scene of many a
war and political meeting. But this was only the beginning of the
enthusiasm. When the noise subsided, Mr. Beecher continued,
“When I go back home, I shall proudly tell that I have grasped the
hand of the nephew of the great Southern Chieftain; I shall tell my
people that I went to the Confederate capital with a heart full of love
for the people whom my principles once obliged me to oppose and
that I was met half-way by the brave Southerners, who can forgive
as well as they can fight.”
Five minutes of applause followed, and then, Mr. Beecher, having
gained the hearts of his audience, began his lecture and was
applauded to the echo. That night, he entered his carriage and
drove to his hotel amid shouts such as have never greeted a
Northern man in Richmond since the war.
Women who are prominent as hostesses are always remarkable
for tact. No matter how they may differ in years, beauty, tastes,
nationality, attainments and means, they are classed together by
their tact, in the minds of men who know them and know also how
arduous are the duties of a successful hostess. I know many such
women,—Madame Patti, Mrs. Ronalds, who is one of the most
distinguished Americans in London, Mrs. John A. Mackey, the
Baroness de Bazus (Mrs. Frank Leslie), Mrs. Kendal—but I could fill a
chapter with names. The power of these women in the drawing-
room is simply marvelous. Their consummate tact is something for
civilization in general to be proud of. It matters not if they are not in
their best health and spirits and mood; everything uncongenial in
themselves is hidden by their gracious welcome, like Hamlet’s
father’s ghost by the rising sun. In a large company there is likely to
be a social knot or tangle that would appal a well meaning novice in
the rôle of hostess, but the woman who is fit for the position knows
what to ignore and what to illumine.

“There is Apt to Be a Social Tangle.”

And cleverness at introductions in a large company—what a world

of tact it requires! Small wonder that introductions are few at most
fashionable affairs. But the tactful hostess keeps untoward spirits
apart and welds congenial souls together; some of the world’s
closest friendships have come of able hostesses’ introductions of
people who otherwise would never have met.
But what keen watchfulness and knowledge this presupposes, of
the jealousies, petty or large, whether in politics, literature, art, the
drama, of a large assemblage of representative people! It requires
nothing less than genius to peep into the nooks and crannies of the
hearts about them, throbbing with varied purposes and passions, but
these women possess it. Hence they are centres in themselves,
about which antipathetic souls may gather with a common good-will
and cordial good word. It takes all these qualities to be a leader in
society: many women possess them, but compared with all who
should, how few they are!
I know one woman who possesses them all supremely. She is a
wonder, even among Americans. Her name is Mrs. Grover Cleveland.
Think of that schoolgirl passing from books to White House
receptions and diplomatic balls, from the quick but embarrassed
flush of eighteen years, to the sustained, well-poised position of first
lady of the land “all in a twinkling” and, more’s the wonder, all in a
triumph! She went through her ordeal at Washington, for it was an
ordeal, without having an enemy in that Babel of bickerings, cunning
social plots and desperate plunges after prestige. The platform of
the politicians was tariff reform, the people’s was Mr. Cleveland, little
Ruth, furnishing the “Bye Baby Bunting” plank.
The way this remarkable woman earned love and respect, was
illustrated by a little scene, that came under my eye at Lakewood.
The parlor of the hotel is so large that men can stand at one end of
it with their hats on and escape criticism. But one day, when Mrs.
Cleveland, unattended, entered at the other end, with girlish haste
and captivating naturalness, all heads were uncovered in an instant.
She merely wished to find a friend who was dining at the time, so
she walked to the table of her friend. All eyes were upon her, but
she manifested no consciousness. She with her friend slipped out of
the room and into the elevator, and probably up-stairs for a cozy
chat. She was not thinking of the admiring glances of hundreds, but
only in a great-hearted, every-day way of her friend. Such is the
woman. She has won her crown, woven from the blossoms of the
people’s love, and she wears it gracefully.
No woman of my acquaintance has more tact than Mrs. Langtry. I
will guarantee, that her use of it will win any man who may meet
her. When she was last in New York a certain newspaper man was
“cutting” her savagely. Did she horsewhip him after the manner of
some indignant actress? Nay, nay! First she learned who he was,
then she determined to meet him. Her manager invited the young
man to dine with him at Delmonico’s, and the invitation was
accepted. While at dinner the manager accidentally (?) saw Mrs.
Langtry, at another table, in the same great dining-room and
exclaimed,
“By Jove! There’s Mrs. Langtry! Would you like to meet her?” The
scribe hesitated; then consented. “First, let me ask her permission,”
adroitly continued the manager.
“I shall be delighted to meet him,” was the lady’s reply. Two
moments later the scribe and the actress were in close conversation;
the young man was invited to Langtry’s hotel; he walked down
Broadway with her to the Hoffman House, and he knew a thousand
men saw him and envied him. In the following week, his paper
contained a beautiful article on Langtry. The question may be asked,
“Was this tact or diplomacy?” But every one ought to know that
mere diplomacy could never make a dramatic critic change his tone
so startlingly.
But tact is not confined to incidents in the world’s eye. Several
years ago, when that clever and beautiful young woman Mrs. James
G. Blaine, Jr. (now Mrs. Dr. Bull), was greatly afflicted with
rheumatism, her friend, Mrs. Kendal, the well known English actress,
advised massage. Mrs. Blaine objected, she disliked the idea, but
Mrs. Kendal won her over by calling every day and massaging the
sufferer with her own hands.
 Men can do the tactful thing as well as women, and it is to their
credit that they often do it when they can’t imagine that any one will
ever know of it but the beneficiary. One rainy day at Broadway and
Twenty-third Street, an ill-clad, shivering fellow stood, probably he
had nowhere in particular to go, and would rather look at people
than think of himself and his condition. I saw a tall, stout man with
an intellectual, kind face stop, hold his umbrella over the tramp, and
engage him in conversation; it was a mean place to stand, too, for
crowds were hurrying past the big policeman standing at the
crossing. I dashed in front of the chap the instant the tall man left
him.
“See what that man gave me!” he said, showing me a two dollar
bill.
“It’s no wonder,” I replied; “that was Colonel Bob Ingersoll!”
“Hully gee!” the man exclaimed. “I’ve heard o’ him. And here’s
what else he gave me—listen.” The Colonel had told him the story of
“Nobody’s Dog,” as follows:—
“A poor brute of a dog entered a hotel with three travelers. ‘Walk
in, gents,’ said the host heartily. ‘Fine dog, that; is he yours, sir?’
“‘No,’ said one of the men, and ‘No,’ ‘No,’ repeated the others.
 “I Saw Him Hold His Umbrella Over a Tramp.”

“‘Then he’s nobody’s dog,’ said the host, as he kicked the cur into
the street.
“You’re nobody’s dog, but here you are,” said the Colonel in
conclusion, pressing the money into his hand and hurrying away.
I have myself been the gainer by the tact of some men, who
would have been excusable for having their minds full of some one
of more importance, so I am correspondingly grateful. Dear General
Sherman was one of these; his tact was as effective in civil life as his
armies had been on the battle-field. In the fall of 1899, just after I
had published my book—“The People I Have Smiled With,” I received
the following written by the General’s private secretary.
 “My dear Sir:
“I beg you to accept my hearty thanks for a copy of
your book, the same which, I assure you, will give me
much pleasure in perusing.
“With best wishes, as always, I am,
“Your friend,
(Signed) “W. T. Sherman, General.”

Evidently the General thought a moment after signing the above,

for he wrote at the bottom of the sheet “Over,” where he added in
his own handwriting:

“Pardon me for this seemingly formal answer to your

bright and cheery volume, which, as yet, I have merely
glanced at, but contemplate much pleasure and profit
in reading. The ‘Introduction,’ by our mutual friend
‘Cockerill,’ is so touching that it calls for the
sympathetic tear, rather than a smile; so are your
opening words in the first chapter about your
acquaintance with Beecher, etc., etc. But more in the
hereafter.
“I am glad you enroll me in your list of friends, and
will be only too happy to smile with you in person over
your types, as occasion may require.
“Your sincere friend,
“W. T. Sherman.”

I might also call attention to the above as an illustration of the

occasional opaqueness of the private secretary as a medium
between great men and their personal friends, however humble.
 I was at Chicago’s famous hotel, “The Auditorium” during the
dedicatory exercises of the Columbian Exposition, more popularly
known as “Chicago’s World’s Fair.” A great dinner had been given the
evening before to men distinguished throughout the world. The
affair was under the direction of the Fellowship Club, prominent in
which was Editor Scott of the Chicago Herald, and such a gathering
of famous men I had never seen before. Richard Harding Davis
described it graphically in Harper’s Weekly.
Next morning quite naturally, the atmosphere of the hotel was
hazy and dazy. Such of us as dropped into the café for breakfast
were not especially “noticing.”
I sat alone at the end of the room. In came Chauncey M. Depew
with a handsome young lady. Before long his quick eye discerned me
in my isolation. He arose, walked the entire length of that great
room, leaned over me and said,
“Marsh, most through your breakfast?”
“Yes.”
“Then come over and be introduced to my niece. She wants to
meet the celebrities of the day.” Continuing he was kind enough to
say that some of my recently delivered jokes were new, and he must
have been right, for I heard afterward that he used them himself.
But many men of less importance would have sent a waiter for me
instead of coming in person; many more would have succeeded in
not seeing me at all.
When Mrs. James Brown Potter first visited London, she was
chaperoned by Mrs. Paran Stevens, whose daughter, Lady Paget,
was a member of the Prince’s set, and had full entrée to all social
circles. On one occasion Mr. Wilson Barrett set aside a box for Mrs.
Stevens, Mrs. Potter, and their friends, I being among the number
invited to see “Clito” performed.
In London it is the pleasant custom for the actor-manager to send
up refreshments, ices, etc., between the acts, and invite his guests
down into his dressing-room. Eccentric Mrs. Stevens hesitated when
asked to join us all in going down-stairs to visit Mr. Barrett between
the acts. It may have been that she did not wish to incur a social
obligation, but whatever the reason, Mrs. Potter, with infinite tact,
assumed the rôle of charmed and charming guest, allowing Mrs.
Stevens to remain quietly unobserved and free from any future
embarrassment.
Mme. Nordica displayed her charming tactfulness one Sunday at a
musicale given by Mrs. Ronalds in London. It was when peace was
declared between England and the Boers. The news arrived about 4
p. m. Instantly Mme. Nordica sprang to her feet, and sang “God Save
the King.” It was most inspiring, coming just as it did, and those who
were present will never forget how the people stood about clapping
their hands and rejoicing over this great event, which was
announced by an American.
 XX
ADELINA PATTI

Her home in Wales.—Some of Her Pets.—An Ocean Voyage With Her.—

The Local Reception at Her Home-Coming.—Mistress of an
Enormous Castle and a Great Retinue of Servants.—Her Winter
Garden and Private Theatre.—A Most Hospitable and Charming
Hostess.—Her Local Charities Are Continuous and Many.

Craig-y-Nos (Craig-of-the-Night) in the Swansea Valley,

Ystradgnlais, South Wales, by river and meadow and mountain, is
the home of Madame Patti.
Among madame’s pets at her castle is one Jumbo, an American
parrot, who carried with him to Wales his country’s admiration for his
mistress. For when she goes forth into the great world, he puts on a
dejected bearing, and in a voice touched with tears keeps calling,
“Where is Patti? Where is Patti?” But the parrot only gives word to
what is felt by all the good folks of Swansea Valley; for the pets and
the people, of high and low degree, miss this wonderful little woman
when she is away, and she in turn longs for her pets and her
peasants, her country roads and princely retreat, with that whole-
hearted longing which doubtless gives much to the depth of feeling
the world knows in her rendition of “Home, Sweet Home.” This little
song, that makes the whole world kin, bears to the difficult song
work of Patti some such relation as does her life of artlessness to her
life of art. Her nature undisguised is childlike and spontaneous.
When I took ship on the City of New York in May, 1892, in the
same party with Madame Patti, and her husband, Signor Nicolini, she
was full of greetings, and words of parting to those coming and
going just before we sailed.
 Nicolini’s devotion to his wife was the remark of the ship. He was
ever thoughtful of her, and his services were continual, from his first
one in the morning, that of delivering her mail to her.
Previous to sailing, a Boston lady friend had sent aboard seven or
eight letters, with the direction that one should each morning be
delivered to Madame Patti. What a merrymaking there was when the
usual, or rather, unusual letter bobbed up every morning! A fresh-
cheeked young country girl could not have been more
demonstrative. But such is her single-mindedness: her heart is
young, and that is no doubt one of the great causes of the depth of
her beauty. An ocean voyage generally washes out the skin-deep
variety, but when I saw Patti every day, rich Spanish beauty turned
up with her every time. She was the pet of the people without
seeming to be conscious of it, and went along through the days like
other folks, speaking to friend after friend in the language of their
preference, for it makes no difference to her—German, French,
Spanish, Italian or English; and with all her naïvete, she is an adroit
and charming diplomat.
“You must visit me,” she said one day on the steamer to me. “I
will not take no for an answer. I will follow you all over England with
telegrams, if you do not.”
 “I will follow you all over England with telegrams.”
I went.
At Paddington station I found that my hostess was truly a royal
one, for there was the private car of His Royal Highness, the Prince
of Wales, awaiting her. The interior was banked with flowers, from
end to end, and snatching up bunches here and there, Patti would
be all in a glee over them. As the train moved, three beautiful young
girls ran down the length of the station to get a last glimpse of Patti.
Two of them threw up their hands, their faces flushed with the race;
but the third sped to the end of the platform. It was a pretty picture.
In our party were Madame and Monsieur Nicolini, madame’s
companion and two maids, Nicolini’s attendant and valet. I
completed the group, and with reason was congratulating myself,
knowing the scarcity and luxury of the private car in England. As we
swept by Neath, the former home of my hostess, then the seat of
Henry M. Stanley, her eyes sparkled, for home meant so much to
her, and she was almost there. What a lark there was too on our
short run, with Patti singing “On the Bowery,” and snatches from
other “fad” airs, Nicolini joining in, and now breaking away on his
own account into “Annie Rooney” with the refrain, “Adelina Patti is
my sweetheart.”
We were met at the station by a corps of servants, a big drag, and
equipages for guests, and were driven in handsome style around the
frowning brow of the great craig, into full view of the castle,
spreading out its arms as if in gladness at the happy home-coming
of its queen.
As we neared the great gate all the household gathered to meet
us, from the head man Heck, to the stable boys. It seemed to me
that I had been assigned to the choice of the eighty rooms of the
castle, so luxurious were all the appointments about me.
 “The clever bird surprised me by ejaculating Pity Patti.”

I spoke of the pets. There were twenty-five or thirty varieties of

birds, besides donkeys, ponies and rare dogs, of which Patti is very
fond, always having numbers of them accompany her in her walks.
Ten of these birds were parrots. Each one of these birds had
acquired that peculiar style of eloquence best suited to his
disposition and temperament. For example, one day when Patti got a
trifling hurt, the clever bird surprised me by ejaculating, “Pity Patti!”
This gushing bird has ever since maintained a steady sympathy,
spending most of his verbally unhappy life saying “Pity Patti! Pity
Patti!” As you go up to each parrot, he thus, with some different
speech unburdens his mind to you. They are sociable birds,
spending most of their time together, and when, new and then, a
sewing-society notion strikes them all at once, it might be called a
unanimous change of subject.
From the moment of arrival, a valet is put at the service of the
guest, and orders are taken by him at night, for the following
morning’s breakfast. There is no rising time. While Patti is an early
riser, she makes no such demands upon her guests. The valet
appears at the hour ordered, prepares the bath, and serves
breakfast at any time desired. Patti after her regular morning bath,
takes her breakfast, and reads her daily mail before going out for
the day. The guest is absolutely free to do as he wishes until half-
past twelve. During my morning strolls I often met Patti sauntering
through the grounds with her well-beloved dogs.
At half-past twelve all meet at luncheon, and all must be prompt.
At this little déjeuner, which is by no means a light meal, Patti is a
gale of joyous chat and greeting. The trivial incident is touched into
color by her vitality.
Then comes the famous afternoon drive. As a rule the homes of
the neighborhood are connected by telephone with the castle, and
invitations come and go. One afternoon we drove to a farmhouse of
a neighbor, where we saw a contest between three sheep dogs.
There were three sheep to each dog, and that one was proclaimed
winner who most quickly drove his three sheep through one opening
into a corral. It was an intensely interesting illustration of the
instinctive sheep-driving skill of the dogs. Then again we would go
for a long spin over the hills through the keen mountain air.
A light English tea at five, after which we had until half-past seven
to rest and dress before appearing at dinner, the great event of the
day. All, of course, wear full dress, gathering in the boudoir where
one sees pictures and autographs of famous people the world over.
Among the photographs I noticed those of Mrs. Cleveland, Christine
Nilsson, Nieman, Albani, Scalchi, Hans Richter, Verdi, and the King
and Queen of Italy. A full length portrait of Mrs. Cleveland appears
beside that of the Princess of Wales. The coloring, hangings, and
wall coverings are all suggestive of restfulness in their richness.
The first announcement one has of dinner is a melody of silver
bells. The notes seem to cling to the bells until they are fairly shaken
off like bubbles into the air; then there seem to be two melodies,
one the tender musical shadow of the other.
 Nicolini would go in front of madame, who quickly took his arm
and they would lead the way into the great conservatory or winter
garden, where flowers are rushing into bloom the year round. The
fragrant air is musical with singing birds, and the effect is magical
under the effulgence of the electroliers. The windows command a
magnificent view of the country around, mountain and valley and
winding river, spread just at the feet of the castle; salmon brooks,
stretches of thousands of acres, and hunting grounds covering
nearly ten miles of fine shooting. With her own fingers Patti puts a
boutonnière on guests here and there, and then we intrust ourselves
to the mercy of one of Britain’s greatest chefs.
Just here I am reminded of Norris, the Irish butler, whose sense of
humor almost broke up his self-possession. At the table while I was
telling stories he would hold down his upper lip with his teeth, like
the side of a tent, afraid to let it go, lest it might be blown away by a
breeze of laughter. As it was, the lip kept wrinkling. Both Madame
Patti and I saw it, but concealed our knowledge from Norris, for the
poor conventional soul’s heart would have been broken, had he
suspected that we knew of his having lost the icy calm of a properly
conducted butler. He would “list” his head over to one side, cough,
fly around in unnecessary ways, and altogether expend a great deal
of energy in keeping down the humorous side of his nature.
The attachment of Patti’s servants to her is as constant as that of
her friends and her pets. Norris had been with her thirteen years;
one servant had been with her five years; another, her Swedish
valet, for nine years; then there were the driver, Joe; George, her
courier; and the general manager, a man of varied accomplishments
and great executive ability, Guillaume Heck.
Among all those about her, none is so close as is Caroline
Baumeister, an Austrian woman, her companion, who has been with
her nearly forty years. Constantly at her side with her council and
care, Caroline is Patti’s friend in every sense of the word. Of
excellent family, robust in mind and body, of that well-balanced,
soothing and serene temperament which has finally made Patti a
child in her dependence upon it. Caroline has a Mexican girl, Padro,
as her assistant.
After dinner we pass into the billiard rooms, of which there are
two, with French and English and American tables. At the end of one
of these rooms is a monster orchestrion, which cost thirty thousand
dollars, and which furnishes music during the games. Anything may
be played on it, from Wagner to the latest popular air, by simply
inserting a roll. These rolls, by the way, cost one hundred dollars
each; in truth golden music.
During these little after-dinner billiard games the sincerity and
simplicity of Patti is seen to great advantage. For instance, imagine
the picture of the great diva catching up a billiard cue, and marching
around the room, followed by all the guests, to the tune of the
Turkish March played on the orchestrion. Often during the course of
the evening, when she could stand the buoyant effect of the music
no longer, she would break into song, trilling as naturally as a bird,
and as spontaneously.
After a certain time spent in the billiard rooms, we would wander
through a continuation of the winter garden, into one of the most
cherished possessions of Patti, her private theatre. This theatre was
erected at a great cost, and with a care for detail which may be
imagined, when it is known that Mr. Irving sent down his head
carpenter from London, to see that perfection was reached at every
point. Mr. Irving has said several times that it was the most perfect
thing of its kind he had ever seen. Every property is complete; there
are the traps, the thunder and lightning, everything metropolitan,
even the floor, which is adjustable either for inclined auditorium
purposes or for the level of a ball-room floor. There are six dressing-
rooms, and the stage, built for sixty people, has a “run” of eighty
feet, while the auditorium will accommodate three hundred and fifty
and the gallery eighty people. During the little evenings, the gallery
is generally filled by domestics and peasants. Programmes are
prepared with elegance for each entertainment. I have one now—
the operatic matinée in honor of His Royal Highness, Prince Henry of
Battenberg, and party:
Overture “Martha,” orchestra. Vocal concert (artists, Madame
Adelina Patti-Nicolini, Madame Giulia Valda, Signor Vovara), “Faust”
Act III, Garden Scene, in which Signor Nicolini, as Faust, took part.
The conductor was Signor Arditi. The programme is richly
embellished in purple and scarlet and gold.
One of the ornaments on the walls of this beautiful little theatre is
the armor worn by Patti in her creation, at the age of nineteen, of
the character of Joan of Arc. She also appears in a splendid painting
on the curtain, as “Semiramis” in her triumphal car.
During my stay the idea struck Patti of having a little
entertainment in my honor. So George, the courier, was posted off to
Swansea to get an orchestra, and other parts of the equipment
needed for this hasty-pudding matinée, for there was only one day
in which to get ready.
It took place June 15th, 1892. The programme was filled by Patti
and four or five friends, including myself in the humorous number.
Patti’s voice can never be heard to such advantage as under the
shadow of her mountains in this peaceful valley; here she sings from
very gladness because she is free. She is out of the cage (for Patti is
never so caged as when before the public) in her own home where
song is not an article of merchandise, but the gratuitous offering of
nature. So it is that her trills are more brilliant and spontaneous than
the same flights for which she receives five thousand dollars a night.
Every Christmas a thousand children are entertained, and a charity
concert is given, when presents are distributed by her to the poor of
Swansea and Neath districts, being handed out by her personally.
Her good offices to the poor are done in numberless ways, the
greater part unknown. I heard during my visit this story: there was a
poor child born just inside the big gate one evening. The quivering
peasant mother, homeless and alone, turned instinctively in her
agony to the good mistress of the valley, and had crawled within the
friendly shelter of the lady’s wall. Patti, returning from a drive found
them and took them to her home and had them cared for. She
named the little tot Craig-y-Nos. When all was well, the woman
offered to work out the debt, but “No,” said her hostess, “you are my
guests.”
There is a standing rule that no poor shall be turned away from
the castle. Each one, no matter how deserving, is given bread and
beer, and they come in continually from miles around.
“Lady of the Castle,” she is affectionately called by the plain folk of
that country. Can one wonder then that when she drives out all
greet her with grateful deference, and the little children curtsey as if
to a queen. Whenever I drove out with her I saw the same
demonstration.
Patti has a retinue of sixty domestics while she is at home, and
leaves twenty-five to look after things when she is away. There is a
complete electric plant with a power-house so far away as to avoid
the noise of the machinery; also a gas plant, if this light is preferred;
a telephone and telegraph service connect the castle with the
outside world. Let me not forget the dairy, the steam laundry, and
the refrigerating facilities for the meats. The stables are elegantly
constructed and equipped, there being seven pairs of carriage
horses beside the riding horses, ponies and donkeys.
One of the ponies had been pensioned after long and faithful
service, and spent most of his time browsing in the paddock with
Jenny, the little pet donkey of the place. The two were uncommonly
knowing and the fastest of friends, one running in front of a person
trying to catch the other. This manœuvre they could successfully
carry out, until the one trying to catch either of them would retire in
disgust, to the great satisfaction of Tom and Jenny, who would
peacefully resume their tête-à-tête meal.
With all the paraphernalia of comfort and convenience, it remains
only for the personality of Patti to convert the castle into home.
What a hostess! During my stay everything seemed to be done with
special reference to me. Even the American flag was hoisted on the
castle in honor of my nationality. Thus special guests are always
flatteringly recognized by the sight of their own country’s flag. The
individual tastes of the guests are studied to the minutest degree by
all. For instance, I have always been very fond of ice. Imagine this
trifling taste of mine being detected without my knowledge. I found
out that it had been in this way. When I left I found my lunch
providently and daintily put up, and among the delicacies I
discovered a piece of ice! It had been frozen into a small block
specially for me, and I enjoyed it very much, all the trip.
Then again, I had expressed an interest in her jewels, so during
my stay she decked herself every night with different ones, all in my
honor, as she assured me.
Do what she will, this woman, worshiped of all nations, is the
willing slave of a loving heart. Her old parents, whom she loved and
revered when they were living, she loves and honors now that they
are dead, and not a day passes, without some fond reference to
them.
A friend of Patti’s, a French lady, met with distressing financial
losses. In her need Patti said to her, “Come and live with me!” and
she did, for many happy years after that.
When Joe was driving me to Penwyllt I thought of it all as the
road lengthened between me and my friends. I remembered that
Patti had told me that of all American cities, Richmond and Syracuse
were her favorites, but I feel sure she is the favorite of all our cities.
The world has been made glad by her song, but not more glad
than the mountain district by her presence. There she lives a queen,
crowned by the love of all about her.
 XXI
SOME NOTABLE PEOPLE

Cornelius Vanderbilt.—Mrs. Mackey.—The Rockefellers.—Jay Gould.—

George Gould and Mrs. Edith Kingdom Gould.—Mary Anderson.—
Mrs. Minnie Maddern Fiske.—Augustin Daly.—Nicola Tesla.—Cheiro.

The mass of the people envy most the men and women who have
most money; my own envy goes out hungrily to those who are
happiest, though I have sometimes inclined strongly toward the
majority. One day in London, while my mind was full of the good
that a great lot of money would do me, I learned that Mr. Cornelius
Vanderbilt, who was still suffering from the effects of a paralytic
stroke, was at a hotel in Piccadilly. Besides being one of the best
men in the world, he had been one of my best friends, so I called on
him, hoping I might cheer his heart in some way and make him
forget his trouble. It was hard to get at him, for his secretary had
been ordered by the physician to admit no one, but I got my card to
him, and he was kind enough to express a wish to see me and a
belief that my visit would do him good.
From Mr. Vanderbilt’s hotel I went to the home of Mrs. John A.
Mackey, whose son Willie had recently lost his life by being thrown
from his horse. I had no desire to intrude upon grief, but Willie and I
had been merry friends together, and I believed remembrance of our
acquaintance would make Mrs. Mackey willing to see me. Here again
I had great difficulty; the butler had received positive order, and it
took me twenty minutes to persuade him that Mrs. Mackey would
not refuse to receive my card. I was right, for she was very glad to
see me. Her house was a veritable palace, containing everything
valuable and artistic that money would buy, yet amid all these
evidences of wealth the bereaved mother sat in deep black,
mourning the loss of her beloved son and, like Rachel, “would not be
comforted.” So my visits to these two good friends convinced me
that money could not do everything.
Probably the most envied man in America is John D. Rockefeller,
for his income alone is believed to exceed half a million dollars a day.
There are many men and women near Owego, N. Y., who attended
school with John Rockefeller, in the little schoolhouse on the old river
road. They did not regard him as a prospective millionaire: he was
merely “one of the Rockefeller boys,” yet they knew him from the
first as the leader of boys of his age. He was the first to suggest a
game of sport, and those who remember him best assert that unless
John had his own way he would not play. He did not fly into a rage
when opposed and overruled, but he would watch the play without
taking part in it. And such has been his business policy; it is a matter
of record that he has embarked in no business ventures not of his
own suggestion, nor in any of which he had not full control.
Like another great financier, Jay Gould, his personality dominated
every undertaking in which he was interested; neither he nor Gould
allowed any one to think for them. Both men were alike in another
respect; they brought up their sons in the same self-reliant manner,
instead of allowing them to drop into luxury and self-indulgence,
after the manner of most millionaires’ sons.
Young Mr. Rockefeller is a man of simple and regular habits, but
not at all afraid to enter the field of labor in competition with great
brain-workers. He is a creditable exponent of his father’s business
creed.
Jay Gould once wrote as follows, in a letter to a personal friend:
“Man seems to be so constituted that he cannot comprehend his
own situation. To-day he lends his ear to the charming words of the
deceiver and is led to believe himself a god; to-morrow he is hissed
and laughed at for some fancied fault, and, rejected and broken-
hearted, he retires to his chamber to spend a night in tears. These
are certainly unwarranted positions: the first to ingratiate himself or
obtain your notice, and therefore his delusion of greatness is
unwarranted, while the latter is the voice of the envious—those who
look with a war-like spirit upon the tide of your prosperity, since they
deem themselves equally meritorious. And this last assumption, over
which you have shed your tears, is the true voice of your praise!”

“Luxury and self-indulgence after the manner of most millionaire

sons.”

Only the man who had thus accurately gauged the world’s
estimate of wealthy men could have been the example and
inspiration of George Gould, upon whose shoulders was laid a
burden of almost incalculable weight, which he has borne
successfully and without making a public show of himself and his
millions. He is a genuine man, and has a worthy companion in his
wife, who as a bride went from the stage to the home of one of the
wealthiest young men in the land, yet whose admirable womanhood
has never been marred by consciousness of great riches. She has
never forgotten her old professional associates whom she liked, nor,
indeed, any mere acquaintance. Not long ago she happened to see
me in the studio of Marceau, the photographer. Leaving some friends
with whom she had been conversing she came over to me, greeted
me cordially, and congratulated me heartily on my marriage, yet with
the unstudied simplicity and directness for which she is noted.
Early in life I became an autograph hunter and an admirer of
stage deities of both sexes, and one of the first autographs I ever
got was that of Mary Anderson, who gave it very graciously. Since
then she has favored me with others, but that first one is among my
dearest treasures. The American people were in accord with me in
admiration of Miss Anderson. She was lovingly referred to as “Our
Mary” and her success in this country was regarded as a guarantee
of an enthusiastic reception abroad.
But the English public is hard to approach; to please on this side
of the water is not an assurance of success over there, and Miss
Anderson’s appearance did not make an exception to the rule. For
sometimes she had poor audiences at the Lyceum (London). Efforts
were made to have the Prince of Wales attend a performance, but
for a time they were unsuccessful. One night he entered the theatre
and was so much pleased that after the first act he sent word to the
stage that he wished to see Miss Anderson. The lady’s mother, Mrs.
Griffen, who received his message, requested that he would defer
the meeting until the end of the play, as she feared the honor might
“upset” her daughter and mar the performance. The Prince replied:
“Certainly,” like the considerate gentleman he always is.
Meanwhile Michael Gunn, the manager of the theatre, with
characteristic managerial shrewdness, saw a great chance for
advertising, so he rushed off by a cable to America a message which
read:
“Mary Anderson refuses to see the Prince of Wales without the
Princess.”
The difference in time—five hours, between the two countries
gave him the advantage he wanted. The New York papers got it
barely in time for their last editions. Next day they cabled London
papers for particulars, but the day of a great American morning
paper does not begin until noon or later, by which time, say 6 p. m.
on the other side of the Atlantic, all London is at dinner or getting
ready for it and must not be disturbed. Besides, the English papers
do not exhibit American taste and enterprise in nosing out news. So
they published the story as a fact, and without comment. It was too
small a matter for either of the parties to formally deny in print, but
it was large enough to make no end of talk and of interest in the
American actress. From that bit of advertising shrewdness—some
Englishmen gave it a ruder name, dated Miss Anderson’s success in
London.
Mention of Miss Anderson recalls a reception in her honor which I
attended, at the home of Mrs. Croly (“Jennie June”). Among the
guests was a young actress who was just coming into notice—Miss
Minnie Maddern, now Mrs. Fiske. Her beautiful, expressive eyes
followed the guest of honor so wistfully that I said:
“I see you are observing Miss Anderson intently.”
“Yes,” she replied. “What a beautiful woman she is! And what an
actress! What wouldn’t I give to be able to act as she can!”
Such modesty has its reward. Mrs. Fiske has not only reached the
plane of Mary Anderson’s ability, but has gone far above it, and
stands to-day upon a pinnacle of art that no other American actress
has ever climbed. One night, at a performance of “Hedda Gabler,” I
asked my friend Charles Kent, whose high rank as an actor is
admitted by every one, if Mrs. Fiske was not our greatest actress. He
replied:
“Mrs. Fiske is more than our greatest actress She is the greatest
personality in the profession. She is the Henry Irving of America.”
One of the greatest losses the American stage ever sustained was
through the death of Augustin Daly. I have heard some of his most
determined rivals call him the greatest stage manager in America,
and since his death they have expressed doubt that his equal would
ever appear. I was his neighbor for quite a while; I saw him often
and chatted much with him, but I never knew a man less given to
“talking shop.” Apparently he had no thought for anything but his
two sons, both of whom were then living, and on Sunday mornings
it was a great pleasure to me to see him walking with his boys to the
Catholic Church, of which he was a devout member. But he lost both
sons in a single week, one dying, broken-hearted, after the death of
the other. The double loss was one from which Mr. Daly never
recovered, though he sought relief in hard work. I often met him
after midnight on the old green car that passed through Thirty-
fourth Street, yet next morning saw him leave the house as early as
eight o’clock. Busy though he was, he never forgot his friends; he
was so kind as to keep them under continual obligations. I recall a
complimentary dinner which Major Handy wished to give Mr. Daly,
but when he approached the prospective guest, Daly said:
“Oh, you invite your friends, and I’ll give the dinner.”
New York managers are seldom visible in the front of the house
during a performance, but Mr. Daly’s eyes seemed to be there as
well as on the stage. At the hundredth performance of “The Taming
of the Shrew” the house was packed; after endeavoring in vain to
buy a seat I stood at the railing, where Mr. Daly saw me and said:
“Come with me, Marsh.”
We went up-stairs to the balcony where he got a camp-stool from
somewhere and placed it for me in the middle aisle, whispering me
at the same time to fold it at the end of the performance and bring it
down to him, as he was breaking one of the ordinances regarding
fires in theatres by allowing me to sit in the aisle.
Dr. Nicola Tesla, the great electrician, is an oft-seen figure, yet his
retiring disposition and his distaste for society make him personally
unknown. Any one who has visited the Waldorf in the evening must
have seen this interesting man sitting alone at a table in a corner of
the winter garden, for there he is, night after night, after his solitary
dinner, wrapped in his thoughts. He has told me that here, in an
atmosphere of bustle and chatter, he can think better than anywhere
else: he is oblivious to the people who stare curiously at him, for his
mind is absorbed in the details of some wonderful invention. He lives
at the Waldorf; once he thought of leaving, so he packed his trunks.
His departure was postponed from day to day, so his trunks
remained unopened: rather than unpack them he purchased new
things from time to time according to his necessities. Finally he
decided to remain at the Waldorf, but for all I know to the contrary
the trunks still remain unpacked.
I have the honor of being numbered among Dr. Tesla’s friends, so
I have often stopped at his table for a chat, but never without his
invitation. Most sensitive natures are so self-absorbed as to be
utterly selfish, but Dr. Tesla, although sensitive in the extreme, is
always considerate of the feelings of others. I know of many
occasions on which he displayed this rare quality, and I may be
pardoned for mentioning one which concerned myself. I sent Dr.
Tesla a copy of my book “People I’ve Smiled With” and received a
polite acknowledgment, which was followed almost immediately by a
long letter, as if he feared I had been hurt by the shortness of the
earlier communication.

“He was reading a lady’s palm.”

Several of my friends were at the Victoria Hotel in London while I

was also stopping there, and among them was Miss Loie Fuller, who
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