James Gordon Bennett Jr.

“ STORIES ABOUT JAMES GORDON BENNETT Many are the stories told of the late James Gordon Bennett. One, more than any other, reveals one of his weaknesses—a disinclination to acknowledge an error.
Before taking up his residence abroad he frequently breakfasted at Delmonico's, then downtown. One Christmas morning he gave the waiter who always served him a small roll of bills. As soon as opportunity offered the waiter looked at the roll, and when he recovered his equilibrium took it to Mr. Delmonico. There were six $1,000 bills in the roll. ”

“ J. G. BENNETT AND HIS MONKEY. carefully, lest he should do some damage to himself or others. When we left Havana for New Orleans, on board the steamer “Falcon,” Mr. James Gordon Bennett, editor of the New York Herald, and his wife were also passengers. After permitting one favorable notice in his paper, Bennett had turned around, as usual, and had abused Jenny Lind and bitterly attacked me. There was an estrangement, no new thing, between the editor and myself. The Herald, in its desire to excite attention, has a habit of attacking public men and I had not escaped. ”

“ To write like this is to give effect of paradox, even when one is talking common sense. It is clear that Mr. Bennett does it deliberately. He does it as an efficient artist, not as a bungler. He fishes for our interest with a conscious gaucherie of phrase, as when he ends his reference to the novels of Henry James with the sentence: “They lack ecstasy, guts.”
One of the most amusing passages in the book194 is that in which Mr. Bennett leaves us with a portrait of himself as artist in contrast to Henry James, the writer of “pot-boilers.” ”

“ He merely scratched his head, tilting one of his Turkish caps to that end.
"The fact is," she cried, with a grammatical carelessness which was shocking in a woman who had professed to teach everything, "every one has got their knives into Emanuel Prockter. And it's simply because he's good-looking and well-dressed and sings beautifully."
"Good-looking!" murmured James.
"Well, isn't he?"
"He's pretty," said James.
"No one ever said he had a lot of brains—"
"I never did," James put in.
"But what does that matter? He is polite. He does know how to behave himself in polite society. ”

“ You aren't a Churchman, either; but your niece now goes to St. Luke's every Sunday. So does my stepson. Your niece is out to-night. So is my stepson. And if they are not together somewhere I shall be very much astonished. Of course, the new generation does as it likes."
"And what next?" James inquired.
"I'll tell you what next," cried the mature lady, with the most charming vivacity. "I like your niece. I've met her twice at the St. Luke's Guild, and I like her. I should have asked her to come and see me, only I'm determined not to encourage her with Emanuel. Mr. ”

“ Glasses and mugs could be seen, but not heard, dancing. Mr Arthur Smallrice, Mr Abraham Harracles, Mr Jos Rawnpike, and Mr James Yarlett, entirely inattentive to the acclamations, stepped heavily from the platform and sat down. When Edwin caught Big James’s eye he clapped again, reanimating the general approval, and Big James gazed at him with bland satisfaction. Mr Enoch Peake was now, save for the rise and fall of his great chest, as immobile and brooding as an Indian god. ”

“ There she is!" shouted an eager voice. Seeing more human society in G.J. [214] and Christine, the group stopped near them.
G.J. gazed in the indicated direction, and lo! there was a point of light in the sky.
And then guns suddenly began to sound much nearer.
"What did I tell you?" said another voice. "I told you they'd cleared the corner at the bottom of St. James's Street for a gun. Now they've got her going. Good for us they're shooting southwards."
Christine was shaking on G.J.'s arm. ”

“ The latest novel of his which I read was "The Ambassadors," and upon that I took oath I would never try another. I remember that I enjoyed "The Other House"; and that "In the Cage," a short novel about a post-office girl, delighted me. A few short stories have much pleased me. Beyond this, my memories of his work are vague. My estimate of Henry James might have been summed up thus: On the credit side:—He is a truly marvellous craftsman. By which I mean that he constructs with exquisite, never-failing skill, and that he writes like an angel. ”

“ Left to himself, he would surely have preferred an evening at the Blood Tub to a business interview with Mr Enoch Peake at the Dragon. But naturally he had to scorn the Blood Tub with a scorn equal to the massive and silent scorn of Big James. And on the whole he considered that he was behaving as a man with another man rather well. ”

“ It was she who first saw them fighting, or at any rate arguing. Then Andrew Dean 'charged' him in, as if they were playing football, and walked on; and Emanuel Prockter scrambled out."
"H'm!" reflected James. "Well, if ye ask me, lass, Emanuel brought that on himsen. I never seed a man look a bigger foo' than Emanuel looked when he went off in my mackintosh and Turkish cap." ”

“ Bennett is not only extraordinarily versatile in his observations of people, places, books—anything whatsoever that he comes upon—but he has the faculty always of seeing objects as if he saw them for the first time; that is to say, he brings imaginative curiosity to bear upon them. He is not personally distressed, like Mr. Wells, about the evil fate of the world any more than he would be elated by its good fortune. But he is interested. He looks for character, and he finds it. He looks for situation, and he makes it. ”

“ Big James smiled. “I’m going to take my walks abroad, sir. It’s seldom as I get about in the town nowadays.”
“Well, I must be off!”
“I’d like you to give my respects to the old gentleman, sir.”
Edwin nodded and departed, very slowly and idly, towards Trafalgar Road and Bleakridge. He pulled his straw hat over his forehead to avoid the sun, and then he pushed it backwards to his neck to avoid the sun. The odour of the shrivelling ox remained with him; it was in his nostrils for several days. His heart grew blacker with intense gloom ”

“ How'd you do it, old man? You're fit—deuced fit!"
"Fit to give pointers to the Wild Man from Borneo," chuckled Blake. He drew out a silver cigarette case and snapped open the lid. "See those little beauties?—No! hands off! Good Lord! those're my arrow tips, soaking in snake poison! A scratch would do for you as sure as a drink of cyanide. Brought down an eland with one of those little points—antelope big as a steer."
"Poison! fancy now!" exclaimed Lord James.
"Yes; from a puff adder that almost got Miss Jenny—fellow big as my leg. Struck at her as she bent to pick an amaryllis. ”

“ Bennett is not afraid of the drab side of life. But he never shows peevishness on the one side nor bloodless romanticism on the other. He sees this drab side, and he sees the passion of life—the aspiring human always trying to be more than it is, or can be, in some desperate, foolish way. This is the tragedy and the hopefulness of tragedy which Mr. ”

“ I was two-thirds drunk when the cyclone flung us ashore. No excuse—except that all of them had turned me down from the first—there at Cape Town. Yes, she knows just what I'm like when the craving is on me. Yesterday, down there at the south headland, before the lion came around, I gave her some idea of what I've done—all that."
"You've lived a cleaner life than most who're considered eligible!" exclaimed Lord James. "I know that with respect to women, you're the cleanest—"
"Eligible!" broke in Blake. "No man is that, far as she's concerned, unless it's you, Jimmy." ”

“ Because such questions did come, we must at once declare, and we are still in presence of them, for all the world as if that case of the perfect harmony, the harmony between subject and author, were just marked with a flaw and didn’t meet the whole assault of restless criticism. What we make out Mr. Bennett as doing is simply recording his possession or, to put it more completely, his saturation ”

“ FREE FIELD FOR BENNETT
No "sacred cows" browsed in Bennett's fields. He even attacked the church regardless of denomination. He wrote the first newspaper accounts of the annual meetings of the various religious organizations much to the annoyance of both pulpit and pew. He reported the proceedings of the police court with a freedom which even enlarged the time-honored freedom of the press. In relating scandal with full particulars that filled columns of his paper, he seemed to think the more he shocked
people the more they would read his paper. ”

“ Their childreen are: (1) Agnes Bennett, b. July 11, 1900, (2) John Edgar Bennett, b. Oct. 11, 1908.
Howard G., Great Falls, Montana.
Emma Elizabeth, d. Oct. 31, 1897.
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JAMES6 BENNETT (Jacob,1 Eleanor,2 Joseph,3 Lydia,4 James5) , b. Jan. 20, 1845, m. Nov. 24, 1869, Alice Style, b. June 10, 1846. Children (Bennett) :
William Styles,7 b. Nov. 15, 1870, m. June 30, 1896, Gertrude Witschief. Their children are: (1) Augustus Bennett, (2) Sarah Bennett, (3) Florence Bennett, (4) Grace Bennett.
James Edgar, b. April 10, 1872, m. 1904, Mary Elizabeth Morris. ”

“ She was a plain girl, possessing few attractions, except the supreme one of being a woman. She was below him in station; but had she not her refinements? Though she could not enter into his mental or emotional life, did she not exhale for him a certain gracious influence? His heart went forth to her. Her flirtations with Mr. Aked, her alleged dalliance with Jenkins? Trifles, nothings! She had told him that she lived with her mother and father and a younger brother, and on more than one occasion she had mentioned the Wesleyan chapel; he had gathered that the whole family was religious. ”

“ I do it to oblige him. He's a gentleman, he is. That polite! I have my half-holiday on Fridays."
"Well, if you've nothing else to do, what do you say to pouring out my tea for me?"
[Pg 137]
"Can't you pour it out yourself? Poor thing!" She smiled pityingly, and began to pour out the tea.
"Sit down," Richard suggested.
"No, thank you," she said. "There! If it isn't sweet enough, you can put another lump in yourself;" and she disappeared behind the screen which hid the food-lift.
Presently he summoned her to make out his check. He was debating whether to tell her that Mr. Aked was ill. ”

“ But the girl was already plunging into the crowd, in the wake of her mother, the maids, and the porters. Ashton hastened after, in a vain attempt to overtake her. Crowds part easier before a pretty, smiling, fashionably dressed girl than before a foppish young man who affects the French mode.
The card with the list of clubs fell from the hand that Lord James raised to screw in his monocle.
"Stow it, Jimmy," growled Blake. "I feel just prime for smashing that fool window." ”

“ He would be!"
"He certainly is in a state," said George, with an uneasy short laugh.
Agg continued:
"And why is he in a state? Because Marguerite says she shall leave the house? Not a bit. Only because of what he thinks is the scandal of her leaving. Mr. Haim is a respectable man. He's simply all respectability. Respectability's his god—Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Always has been. He'd sacrifice everything to respectability—except the lovely Lobley. It's not respectable in a respectable family for a girl to leave home on account of her stepmother. ”

“ Don't think I blame her. I don't. She's right. If I can't stand up and fight it out and win, without being propped up by my friends, I ought to lose out. I'm not fit to marry any woman—much less her."
Lord James tugged and twisted at his mustache, and at last brought out his reply: "Now, I—I say, you look here, old chap, you've got to win this time. It means her, y'know. You must win."
"Jimmy," stated Blake, his eyes softening, "you're the limit!"
"You're not!" flashed back his friend. "There's no limit to you—to what you can do."
"Heap of good it does—your saying it," grumbled Blake. ”

“ Look here, Jimmy, you're clean off. You don't savvy a little bit. Don't you see the point? I can't let her commit herself now—here! You know I can't. It wouldn't be fair to her, and you know it."
Lord James met his look with a clear and unfaltering gaze, and answered steadily: "That all depends on one thing, Tom. If she really loves you—"
"D'you think she's the kind to do it, if she didn't?" demanded Blake. "No, that's not the point, at all. I've tried to be square, so far. ”

“ Aked?"
"The same. I suppose Master Jenkins has made you acquainted with all my peculiarities of temper and temperament.—Glass of milk, roll, and two pats of butter—and, I say, my girl, try not to keep me waiting as long as you did yesterday." There was a bright smile on his face, which the waitress unwillingly returned.
"Don't you know," he went on, looking at Richard's plate,—"don't you know that tea and ham together are frightfully indigestible?"
"I never have indigestion."
"No matter. You soon will have if you eat tea and ham together. A young man should guard his digestion like his honour. ”

“ Hasn’t Maggie told you? Your father called to see me last night just after I’d gone upstairs. In fact I’d begun to get ready for bed. I heard the knocking and I came down and lit the gas in the lobby. ‘Who’s there?’ I said. There wasn’t any answer, but I made sure I heard some one crying. And when I opened the door, there was your father. ‘Oh!’ he said. ‘Happen you’ve gone to bed, Clara?’ ‘No,’ I said. ‘Come in, do!’ But he wouldn’t. And he looked so queer. I never saw him look like that before. He’s such a strong self-controlled man. I knew he’d been to poor Mr Shushions’s funeral. ”