The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, July 16, 1899, Page 28

28 THE SOLE SURVIVING SENATOR OF FIFTY YEARS AGO TALKS ABOUT — JAMES W DRADDURY N 1849.) Henry Clay Addressing the Senate in 1849. From the Painting by P. F. Rothermel. N FRANCISCO CALL, SUNDAY, JULY 16, 1899, F the men who were prominent in out of forelgn wars—the only ones we This Congress thought it settled a great continued to fincrease. It extended of the North and South voted together years ago James have had with non-English speaking natio question, but it only left a her- throughout the country. The Southern against any compromise. Both insisted y of Malne, then a peoples. it of war to come over ten years people got very much aroused. The North- they were right. In the Senate, as well ates Senator, alone su: Mr. Bradbury spoke freely about the lal ern extremists in Congress insisted that as throughout the country, the excite- ves. He celebrated his ni issues of 1848, when he was a Senator. pon the introduction of the bills for they would have the proviso. The South- ment had become intense. seventh Dbirthday a few days e which met in December of the organization of the territory acquired ern extremists then threatened to secede “Then, on motion of Mr. Clay, & com- and is s 1 good health. He atte: o ACCURIME 0N t tes- by the treaty with Mexico the slavery If slavery was to be excluded from all the mittee was appointed that reported a se- of the Bowdoin College the ablest ever Amer- guestion at once sprang up,” Mr. Brad- Territories. Conservative members of ries of bills kncwn as Clay’s compromise. was apparently in perfect ts members were W bury said to me. “The extreme Northern both parties, the Democrats and the Na- The measures embraced by the compro- “:\}:j]‘v‘{u men Insisted on the insertion of the Wil- tionals, united in an effort to bring about mise are generally understood. They in- Cooper. '”“”"Ur W mot proviso, prohibiting slavery 1n'|he a settlement. Cass and Douglas and c¢luded the admission of California as & Dodge o Hunter, Walkel bills covering all the Territories. This Webster and Clay were our leading men, free State and the organization of Terri- nibal Ha ohn Dell, resisted by the Southern members. Webster and Clay acting with the con- tories without the proviso, leaving that > Hou urged that the Territories were the servative Democrats. question to the people thereof. During the terri- then was be- s, Felch, Chase, Underwood, Foote, m, Butle Massach 1g, Baldwin, Y Hale, Dickinson, Ma ymmon property of the whole country, and that they had the same right to them as the North, and that this was an unfair attempt to exclude them. “The discussion went on for months in the Senate and House, and the excitement “Mr. Clay, who had retired to private life after he was defeated by Polk for the Presidency, returned to the Senate in De- cember, 184. The discussion was in prog- ress at that time. Various measures were proposed without avail. The extremists the debates we had the spectacle day after day of Webster and Davis voting together. “I voted with the conservatives. We were kept advised of the movements of the Southern éxtremists and had reason Maurice Grau Wants Opera in English. PAST ISSUES HE WAS A PERSONFAL FRIEND OF WEBSTER AND CLAY JAND A CLASSMATE OF LONGFELLOW. to belleve that they meant what they sald. Mr. Webster was constantly acting with the conservatives, and Mr. Clay sometimes met with us also. “The Northern extremists scouted the jdea of danger. They sald the talk about withdrawing from the Union was mere bluster, and that there was no danger of such attempt. e had occasfon to see Webster fre- quently and to know his views and feel- ings, and I have ever regarded his sup- port of the compromise and his speech of March 7 as among the most patriotic acts of his life. It was his intense love of the Union that gulded his course. He was nsitive to anything that threatened it. “The danger was more serious than was believed at the North, and from ‘what Webster knew he felt it. He and the con- servatives all believed if this crisis was passed the Union could never again be exposed to so great peril, as the increase of population in the North was so much ter than in the South that any future attempt would invariably fail. “Upon the passage of the compromise measure Jefferson Davis, Mason, Hunter able degree. He speaks and writes clearly and forcibly, although he easily becomes fatigued. “Clay,” he sald, “had wonderful tact. 1 remember this incident In the Senate. Soule, a Senator from Louisiana, was a man of great eloguence. He made a speech attacking Clay’s compromise meas- ures, and it made a profound Impression. It aroused Clay, who arose and said a few words in reply which showed his tact and skill. After complimenting the dis- tinquished orator for his eloquence, he said: “‘The gentleman has falthfully de- scribed the agitated condition of the coun- try. What is the business of a statesman in such a condition? To provide & rem- edy. Where is his remedy? What does he propose? Nothing, absolutely nothing, in his two hours’ speech. The statesman should have his remedy. It is small busi- ness to criticize.” “The effect of Soule’s speech was com- pletely overcome in Clay’s five-minute re- ply.” When asked about Calhoun, Benator Bradbury said: “He was a man of very Strange Reason Why He Camn’t Get It—Unusual Talk With the Boss of (rand Opera, and Inter= esting Facts About JAMES W. BRADBURY IN 1899. and other Southern Senators filed their great ability, was honest and sincere, but written protests against it as a surrender Was mastered by his theories. Calhoun of everything of value to the North. was very fond of converting young men “When Webster returned to Boston the to his theories of government. I had a abolitiornists undertook to exclude him long corversation with him prior to the from Faneuil Hall for surrendering every- revival of the slavery question. I recol- thing to the South. He sald, however, lect he made a remark that if his theory that the laws of nature would prevent Of government had been adopted the slavery going into any of the Territories Union would last forever. and that the proviso was unnecessary. _‘‘He then explained his theory. It was The outcome proved it to be true. that the national Government should do “Subsequent events also proved that we &bsolutely nothing except what was nec- were Tight In believiug that there was SS38ry to preserve its nstonality. = He Zanger of'an attempt to secede. Ten years believed the national Government should e avd the attempt was made, but un. bave to do with matters of peace and war, Qi veis diierent chrounigtenien. To 1560 1°oVinE Al internal nisttens (o dach ot vidual State. The nation would serve as the South had a pretext so plausible that they were united. In 1860 they had no ;grei; ;Lt?tgfitolrfi lgt: :u su;_;lle:vould 1;; such pretext and were not united, Mary- (00070 DY S0 F0% SIUAR | STe, TOUE ‘&“;’vfig:““” and Missourl adhering t0 nue or g great number of federal office- “During that ten years railroads had “Oaeiw et b Ab) abon spread throughout the great Northwest gyotem told me that he feared the time 2 2 & 3 s houth® thue Sonihsrnicttion: o Earties would yote rather for the ad vantages to be secured out of federal Pad aBncst sa many soldlers e Tolon Smcas thai fo thi prinothis represen army as all of New England. Yet it re- i = Yok by the parties.” quired an army so large that after more Aaine people, regardless of political than thirty years there are nearly & mill- faith Lonor and revere former Senator fon pensioners, and it took four years of Bradbury as “the grand old man” of his The Sund Of course the by that Edward , might have are in politics later if, after grad- the theater had not ne. . Grau, “my uncle ger in New York at s always hanging e who Is interested in that every one else in knows something trols the orbits that time, and I w around the theater. I began my theatrical career low on the ladder. The first work that sort I did was selling librettos in uncle’s theater in New York—the old ich Theater, now the Fourteenth street. That was in 1866, when Ristori was playing there. I was at school then. After deserting the law, much to my parents’ disgust, I held about every position that one can hold in the theater except on the stage. 1 was never on the stage in my life. I have been apout everywhere, from Panama north and from St. Petersburg west. It was thirteen years ago that I my Fri For a man whose work is so Interesting arly little is now he is a part began to work along toward the present war to overcome the attempt to secede. gtate. His age makes him like the “last e ety ‘Decomilnis Pacting | manager for “These facts will give us the measure of leaf on the tree,” and his achlevements o iants DenxyiL Abbeyahemextiyeard beone the danger if the attempt had been made a5 the contemporary of a group of great a partner. in 1850, and vindicate the wisdom of avert- men of which he is the sole survivor maks ing it by an honorable compromise. “I have always believed the Union was in more danger at that time than it was in the darkest days of the civil war. It was the only time after the commence- ment of the sectional struggle when the South was relatively strong enough to ose the qu Hence him a living historical reminder of the growth and greatness of this American nation. Mr. Bradbury in his college days was a classmate of Longfellow at Bowdoln. He remembers the early history of the United States, and has been a close observer of London is much interested in a plan that has been brought before the Government for the establishment of a national opera, to be subsidized by the Government. Al- though the plan is rather vague, it has gone far enough to indicate that some to y to be taken be- olution of house out in the led, ‘‘and I sup- home, be- e morning and was working pes laid out om table. racts, 15 about ason. “We .’ sald Mr. G eptember 1 E Francisco. half a dozen citles on h hitherto us, and ar- to open the season at era-house on Decem- way been de Reszke will be missed from the company this year, but, on the other hand, Emma Calve will be back in her place again, and after a year spent chief- ly in designing her own tombstone and otherwise indicating that her nerves were in bad condition. She is @s well as ever now and in a hurry to get back to the land of dollars. The season drawing to a close at the Royal Opera-house in Covent Garden will probably bring the Prince of Wales and the other df 1guished stockholders a tidy interest on their mo for it bids fair to ful season on record there, like the last season at the Metro- politan Opera-house in New York. It probably will help Mr. Grau, also, toward the achievement of an ambition he has held for many years. ‘‘Operatic managers sually retire bankrupt, and I do hope I be the most succ he. 1 should like to go to my housa in Paris and write my memoirs. Perhaps I shall some day, although I don’t know that I could write well enough to interest the public, but certainly I've had experi- ences enough in theaters in every part of the globe except in Australia.” It took much questioning to persuade Mr. Grau to eke out some of his autobiog- raphy. It seems that he has been mostly an American for the last forty-five years, having landed in New York from Burope at the tender age of five. He was cut out to be a lawyer, 80 his parents thought, end after he was graduated from the col- Jego of the city of New York at the age ot 20 they insisted that he should go to the calumbia Law School, although he had step of the sort is likely fore long. I asked Mr. Grau what he thought about it, and his answer and the of thought to which it led are rather cant for the future of grand opera Grau is to remain its king bee. id, “national opera means posers of whatever nglish by the best atever nationality ¢ in favor of it that merica the next 1ld permit. In o good objection to grand 1d there are sound ar- guments for | ven the Wagner operas would be enj better by the general public if sung in English, and how vastly ble to all but a few would be ke ‘Don Giovanni’ if sung in English es, I can say unreservedly that if cir- cumstances would permit I would even put on ‘Lohengrin’ in English in New But_circum won't permit. right in theory, but it's not all ice. When you come to sift ons to it you get down finally one, and that is that the artists, as a rule, don't wish to sing in English. Some of them, of course, can’t speak Eng- lish, but that doesn’t matter so much when me to consider that Plancon, for gs an_entire opera in admir- 1 hout being able to speak a single word of that language. No, it 't the difficulty of acquiring English, t it seems to be an objection to the itself. I dare say that if we ask Mme. Nordica, an American, to sing grand opera ‘n would object.” So, doubtless Eames and all the other singers whose native tongue is English. “It doesn't appear to be so much that English is hard to sing as it is that it is considered beneath an artist’s dignity to sing grand opera in English. They seem to feel that it would be somehow a degra- dation.” “But why on earth should it be a degra- dation to sing in English?” “I suppose it must be because, unhap- pily, English is not the native language of grand opera. Englishmen and Ameri- cans don't write grand opera. As goon as the English sI)ea Ing race begins to pro- duce successful grand opera then the stigma on the languege in the minds of singers will begin to disappear. ‘At one time I suggested that ‘The Bo- hemian Girl’ be put on in English. The artists didn’t object to the idea violently, but when Jean de Reszke mentioned the matter to the late Sir Augustus Harris that man told Jean that if he heard him sing ‘The Bohemian Girl’ in English he would never speak to him again. “But aren’t you bound by tradition to the old operas? If even so promising a eomposer as MacDowell or an; other American were to offer you & gooi grand opera would you produce it?” “Produce it? Of course we'd produce 1t if it were so good that we felt confl- dence in it. Aren’t we even now bringing out an opera that is,{)mcucall y now, De Lara's ‘Messaline? nd, by the way, if it goes, we shall bring it out in America with Calve in the principal part, which Mr. de Lara has agreed to rewrite for her, as it originally was arranged for mezzo-soprano. We may bring out Jules Massenet’s ‘Herodiade,’ too, which can’t be sung here on account of the Biblical subject. An American composer, whose name you know well, asked me if I would put on a one-act grand opera if he wrote one for Calve. I told him of course I would if it were a good one. But he never came around with it. “But there haven’'t been flve sucessful grand operas brought out in the last thir- & vears—really no great successes since ‘Carmen.’ However, it ien't operas that the public goes to hear, it Is the artists. Put on ‘Faust’ with an inconspicuous cast and you get a small house. Put on a oor opera—I name no names—with a bril- lant cast, and the house is crowded. And it is the most useful opera manager who knows what the public wants and gives it to them, for the public itself is the best manager of all, and the man who sets imself up to give it something that it oesn’'t want on the ground that it ought to want it is foolish. “Yet if I had to-day the ambition that 1 had twenty years ago I might try to gut on grand opera in English mI sglts of the prejudice against it, for ave such MAURICE GRAU. strong faith in it, and it seems a pity that such powerful supporters of grand opera as England and America should not have it in their own language. It has been tried of course without startiing success, but times change, and 1 firmly believe that we are coming around to it.”” It was Mr. Grau's opinion that if the English Government were going to spend money for the establishment of opera by English composers only, sung by Englis! artists only, they were foredoomed to failure, because English composers were not writing the sort of grand opera that the public seemed especially anxious to hear, and most of the prima donnas now- adays come from America. Mr. Grau is phenomenally busy, as any one would discover who was admitted into the inner managerial sanctum of the solemn old opera house in Covent Gar- den, It is usua.lg/ so dark there that it has to be lighted all day by electricity. From 11 to and from 3 to 5 every day the geason is on Mr. Grau spends his time there trying to write a word now and then, or make a little inroad on the papers on his big, flat desk, while me- chanics, clerks, directors and artists pour in on him, one’after the other, each with some question too important to be de- cided without his assistance. He is not ordinarily much given to talk except that of a plain, straightaway business nature, and it is likely enou%{‘ll that he has never reveaied as much of ‘lfiself to the public befors as he has in_the interview here glven. CURTIS BROWN, clation from Webster and Clay. much of them during this time of danger to the Union, and I revered them as noble have a chance of success. “I belonged to a different political asso- 1 saw patriots.” Senator Bradbury, in spite of advanced years, preserves his faculties to a remark- the progress and development of the na- tion, besides having had a prominent and active part in its history. Points Regarding Wealthy People The Queens wealth is less than $1,000,000 a vear. Rockefeller's income is $L X a year. Mrs. William Rockefeller has received at her country residence 200 Malmaison carnations and 100 of the goid nugget va- riety. They came from Paris and cost $3,000, which is at the average rate of $10 aplece. One of the few sons of prize-fighters that ever amounted to anything is the Right Honorable William Court Gully, Speaker of the British House of Com- mons. His father, John Gully, a butcher, and afterward a prize-fighter, grew rich, and was a member of Parliament for Pon- tefract in 1835. Speaker Gully receives a salary of $25,000 a year. Among the American actresses who have married millionaires are Edith King- don, now Mrs. George Gould; Hope Booth, now Mrs. James A. G. Earll; Julia A thur, now Mrs. B. P. Cheney; Grace Fil- kins, now Mrs. Adolph Marix; Rolande Davis, now Mrs. Charles S. Leaher; Ada Dare, now Mrs. Frank Ehret, and Grace Kimball, now Mrs. Lawrence McGuire. The property recently deeded by Mr: Lelandp:?mnfcrd to the Stanford Unive sity trustees is worth $38,000,000 as an {1 vestment, and could be turned into $15,- 000,000 cash. It includes 300,000 shares of Southern Pacific stock, and the Searles and Crocker interests in that company are pledged to protect the interests of the university, to which Mrs. Stanford will no doubt leave all the rest of her property. One day a man carrying a fuzzy little poodle dog under one arm, entered th office of Philip D. Armour in’ Chicago, an fried to’talk him into buying it. ~The price was exorbitant, $200 for a useless foy poodle. Mr. Armour looked at the man, then at the dog, and back again at the man and said: ‘‘No, the sausage bus- {nesss must pick up considerably befors 1 can J)ay so much for small dogs. Bring around & mastiff, and I'll talk to you." On another occasion one of these self-confi- dent young men who believe that all Wealthy men have a_tender spot for the man of nerve, and who do not hesitate to approach even the busiest men, made Mr, Armour a decidedly bold request, which was promptly denied. Summoning up all the haughtiness at his command, the voung man sald, in a tone that was meant to crush Mr. Armour: “Well, all I can income from her own Mr. asz is that y‘qvllxmnre nfd ger;flemln." “Young man"'— & co . anfeoFr'Te s Dutcner “% cnlsmatical