CHAPTER XI CONCLUSION I HAVE said that Mr. Tilden never married. I may say further of him what Milton wrote on the decease of his most cherished friend Diodati : "Thy blush was maiden, and thy youth, the taste The lot of virgin worth, are given to thee." On two separate occasions I received from Mr. Tilden the assurance that he had never had any acquaintance or relations with the female sex, of which he would have hesitated, from motives of delicacy, to speak with his mother or his sisters. As Jules Simon said of an illustrious French célibataire: "Il n'y a pas de femmes dans sa vie. Il reste cette grand lacune dans son coeur et dans son talent." That Mr. Tilden's life would have been more peaceful and fuller of joys had he married, that the affectionate side of his nature would have been more developed and his personality more generally attractive, there is reason to presume; but that he would have been so great a force in the world as he ultimately became, or that his life would have been so prolonged, may be doubted. The ancients, not without reason, made Venus not only their god of love, but their presiding deity at funerals also, under the name of Libertina. The exceptional longevity of some of the famous anchorites has been attributed in a large degree, and no doubt correctly, to their conti nence, "whereby their whole vigor was consecrated to selfmaintenance instead of being expended in two directions." The pigeon, says Lord Bacon, lives only eight years, while the chaste turtle-dove reaches twenty and even fifty years. The mule is much longer-lived than the horse or the ass. The nightingale that has young annually, rarely lives more than six or eight years, while the célibataires live on for twenty or more. It is a well-ascertained fact that hybrid plants live longer than their parents. To be sure but a nature so keenly sensible to any genuine tenderness, and physically so dependent from infancy upon others, could have well afforded to surrender a few of the later years of his life during three of which he once told me that he did not remember to have had a single pleasurable emotion for the love of a sensible woman and the soothing influences of a cheerful domestic fireside. The following distich inscribed over a statue of Love is as full of wisdom as of wit: Tilden's vital forces, which, in spite of his unrelenting valetudinarianism, were prodigious, and which should have been perpetuated in a family, were husbanded to the last, and as in the case of the poet Pope, Sir Isaac Newton, the philosopher, and especially of some of the famous ascetics of the Christian church, like St. Anthony, Theodosius the cenobite, and St. Paul the anchorite, who lived over a century, seemed all to have been derived to the brain and to have induced a cerebral activity and vigor of which the 1. Whoe'er you are, your master see Tilden family tree, so far as it is now possible to trace it, had produced no other example. That he often thought of marrying, that he had no aversion to matrimony, and that he never had any relations with the other sex which might interfere with the most solemn engagements which a man can contract with it, no one who knew him well could entertain a doubt. Nor was he in the least degree shy or lacking of ease in the presence of the fair sex. Though reared in an obscure village among plain people, he never at any period of his life betrayed any of that awkward shyness so common with persons unaccustomed to the usages of polite society, nor was there ever a time since he was of age that he would have felt the least embarrassment in the presence of any man or woman, whatever their rank. Like England's great cardinal, "Though from humble stock, undoubtedly He was fashioned to honor from the cradle." Tilden never married, only because he never felt the need of a wife. His health was always so uncertain; his mind from youth upward was so constantly absorbed with large affairs, public or private, most of the time with both; his temperament was so purely nervous, and women were, so far as he could see, so unimportant to his success in any of the enterprises upon which his heart was set, that marriage never became the subject of leading interest, as it does, for a time at least, with most men whether they marry or not. In fact, he never knew any woman intimately enough to fall completely under the influence of sexual charms. He seemed to have been betrothed in early life to his country, and the Democratic party occupied with him the place of offspring, until it was too late to think of having any other.1 In this respect Tilden's experience is not without illustrious precedents. Dalembert, in his eulogy of Bossuet, the Bishop of Meaux, discountenances He was as far as possible from sharing the cynical notion of woman proclaimed by St. Chrysostom, that she was a necessary evil, a natural temptation, a desirable calamity, ९९ a domestic peril, a deadly fascination, and a painted devil ; though he might perhaps have agreed with the lover of Eve, that she, as the type of her sex, was "Fair no doubt and worthy well His cherishing, his honoring, and his love, Had he been elected to the presidency in 1876, Mr. Tilden would probably have contracted a matrimonial alliance, more, however, for the better discharge of the duties of his station than to fill any void in his own scheme of life. Had he in his prime married a sensible woman, capable of appreciating his refinement of nature, he would have made a devoted husband and father, though he would have laid a very different and probably much less costly sacrifice upon the altar of his country. Mr. Tilden had no pronounced taste for any of the fine arts, nor did it appear that they ever exerted much influence upon his work or his life. He never appeared to care much for music; he never learned to dance; when his fortune permitted him to indulge in luxuries he went occasionally to the play and the opera, but rather to gratify others than for the pleasure he expected to derive from the entertainment. Even in his school-days his pleasures were all intellectual. He never participated in the athletic games in which his comrades delighted. I doubt if he was ever seen to walk or run very fast. As an antidote to dyspepsia. in middle life he got in the way of riding on horseback, but he never learned how to ride or drive, and those who drove the rumor that that prelate had been secretly married, on the ground that he had been too much occupied with controversies, absorbed with theological speculations, etc., to be forced to have recourse to such consolations as are to be found in a mutual union of tender and peaceful souls. Il avait plus besoin du combat que de société domestique, et de gloire que d'attachments. with him, while he held the reins, were apt to breathe more freely when they found themselves, if they did, safely set down again at their homes. He liked to get his exercise by riding or driving because his horses did most of the work. He always had fine horses. For one span he paid $10,000; for one of his saddle-horses he paid $1,500, and $1,000 for another. He was but partially acquainted with the uses of which hands were capable and for which they were provided. He probably never whittled a stick, tossed a ball, climbed a tree, ran a race, or pulled an oar, nor even carried a cane, except for a few days in Paris under the advice of his physician as a check to certain arthritic tendencies. He could not be prevailed upon, however, to continue its use. He enjoyed massage because it gave him exercise without exertion. When he established himself at Graystone he surprised his friends by the interest he exhibited and the money he lavished in adding to its attractions. He expended some $75,000 in the construction of glass houses, which he stocked with rare and the costliest growths of many climes, besides compelling them to supply his table with the choicest fruits without much reference to seasons or climate. He expended about $13,000 in stocking these houses alone. For a single plant indigenous to Mexico he paid $600. He was very proud of a grand old palm reputed to have once belonged to Washington's collection at Mt. Vernon. It was between two and three centuries old. His grapevine plants cost him between thirteen and fourteen hundred dollars. In the spring of the year immediately preceding his death, he expended over $5,000 in additions to his greenhouse varieties. He also took great pride in his herd of cows and his poultry, upon which he spared no expense to secure the finest breeds to be purchased in his own or any other country. Two superb St. Bernard dogs were his constant companions in his strolls about his place so long as his limbs allowed him that luxury. To 4 |