CHAPTER VI

MARRIAGE AND ITS RESULTS

THE lady to whom Mark Hanna was married in September, 1864, was Miss C. Augusta Rhodes. They had met at a bazaar in the spring of 1862, just after Miss Rhodes had returned from a finishing school in New York City. On that occasion Mark had won the favor both of mother and daughter by helping them out of an embarrassing situation. An acquaintance followed, and the two young people promptly fell in love with each other. Mark was an eligible suitor, and there was no good reason why an engagement should not have immediately followed. But when Miss Rhodes's father was approached, he met the suitor with a peremptory and probably an explosive negative.

Mrs. Hanna gives two reasons to account for the opposition. Her father, Mr. Daniel P. Rhodes, a coal and iron merchant and one of Cleveland's most successful business men, was a vigorous and self-willed man. Behind his opposition was apparently the instinctive repugnance which certain fathers have to the marriage of their children; but of course he had what appeared to be a better reason at the end of his tongue. He did not want his daughter to marry Mark Hanna because he did not like the young man's politics - which is not such a bad reason at a time when differences of political opinion were deluging the country with blood. Daniel P. Rhodes was a strong Democrat, and unlike many of his partisan associates in the Middle West, he was more of a Democrat than he was a unionist. Stephen A. Douglas was distantly related to him, and he had taken an intense interest in Douglas's political career. The defeat of his favorite in 1860 so embittered him that he could not forgive the Republicans, who brought it about. He used to say to the young suitor, "I like you very well, Mark, but you are a damned screecher for freedom."

The order was issued that the two young people should be

kept apart; but it was an order easier to issue than to execute. Mark was captain of the Ydrad Boat Club, and both conspicuous and ubiquitous in Cleveland society. The order to keep Miss Rhodes away from her lover was equivalent to an order for her to stay at home. She was forbidden to attend the dances given during the winter by the Boat Club, an enforced isolation which increased her unhappiness. Mark does not appear to have been absolutely forbidden the house, but his visits were discouraged, and he saw Miss Rhodes, if at all, only under surveillance.

For a long time the young suitor appeared to make no headway. Daniel Rhodes was really in earnest, and he was not the man to yield except under compulsion. In a country where the exercise of parental authority is sanctioned by public opinion the opposition might have proved fatal, but in the land of freedom a way is usually found to bend a stubborn parent to the will of his offspring. Mark Hanna was as obstinate a man as Daniel Rhodes, and he was armed with the swords both of Passion and of Righteousness. He persisted. Miss Rhodes was very unhappy. She pleaded and wept. Her health suffered. There was no telling what might happen. Daniel Rhodes had no peace at home or abroad. Finally he yielded. Before Mark started for Washington the engagement was recognized, and on Sept. 27, 1864, he was married to Miss Rhodes in St. John's Church-the groom being a little over twenty-seven years old and the bride twenty-one. The day of the ceremony Daniel Rhodes said to the triumphant groom, "It's all over now, Mark, but a month ago I would like to have seen you at the bottom of Lake Erie."

Daniel Rhodes may have consoled himself for the loss of a daughter by the idea that he had acquired a son. After the marriage he did his best to keep the young couple near him and under his thumb. When they returned from their wedding trip Mark Hanna and his wife lived for a while in the Rhodes mansion on Franklin Avenue, and more than a year elapsed before they set up an establishment of their own. Early in 1866 they moved into a small house on Prospect Street, in spite of the opposition of Mr. Rhodes; but their move towards independence was not a success. The young couple had one dif

ficulty after another, and in the end they were forced to submit to the will of the obstinate Mr. Rhodes.

In December, 1866, their first child was born and was named Daniel Rhodes Hanna, after the dominant father-in-law. A few months later Mark Hanna was seized with an acute attack of typhoid fever the malady which was subsequently to cause his death. He was desperately sick, but being young and strong, he pulled through. While he was still struggling against the depressing after effects of his illness, he met with business reverses. Robert Hanna and Co. had built a new boat, the Lac la Belle, which is said to have been the best vessel on the Lakes. It appears that Mark Hanna had an individual interest in her as well as his share of the firm's interest. After only a short period of service she collided with another boat in the Detroit River, and went to the bottom a total loss.

Nor was this all. Soon after his marriage Mark Hanna had started a petroleum refinery. It was a new industry. The buildings were small and the business uncertain. Insurance companies looked askance at the risk. According to his daughter's account Daniel Rhodes was violently opposed to his sonin-law's enterprise, not merely because he did not like the precariousness of the venture, but because he wanted Mark Hanna to join him in the coal and iron business. Every time he heard the fire bells he would say: "There! I suppose Mark's damned oil refinery is burning down." His constant repetition of this remark finally became a family joke. But one day it did burn down, and at that time Mark Hanna, while he was up and about after his attack of typhoid, was still far from well. He did not get home until two o'clock in the morning. When he came in, he said: "Well, I have got to the bottom. The boat is sunk, the refinery is burnt and worse still, my health is gone. If I were well, I would not be discouraged. As it is, I don't know what will become of us." Early the next morning Daniel Rhodes turned up at the house on Prospect Street, walked in and greeted the happy pair with the admonition: "Now, I guess you two young fools will be good and come home." They meekly acquiesced, and that very day they returned to the Rhodes house on Franklin Avenue. The father-in-law stood by, while they packed up, and consoled the young man with the

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