Colyums

A Master of Political

S

Portraiture

OME four years ago widespread discussion was aroused on both sides of the Atlantic by the publication in London of a book entitled "The Mirrors of Downing Street." The book consisted of clever and slightly indiscreet character-sketches of England's political leaders, and its author hid his identity under the fantastic nom de plume, "A Gentleman with a Duster."

A few months later an anonymous "Mirrors of Washington" did for America something of what the earlier book had done for England. It dealt with the intimate selves of Warren G. Harding, Woodrow Wilson, Elihu Root, Charles E. Hughes and other of our national celebrities, and was regarded as even superior to its English prototype.

Public curiosity played over both books for some time without discovering their authorship. Gradually Harold Begbie was recognized as the author of the English "Mirrors," and Clinton W. Gilbert was held responsible for "The Mirrors of Washington." Mr. Gilbert admits that he wrote the book. At the time when he wrote it he was Washington correspondent of the Philadelphia Public Ledger. Before that he, had served a journalistic apprenticeship as reporter for the New York Press and associate editor of the New York Tribune. At the present time he is writing a feature for the Philadelphia Public Ledger and a chain of newspapers under the title, "The Daily Mirror of Washington."

Three of Mr. Gilbert's recent articles have been devoted to William J. Bryan, Joseph P. Tumulty and Edward L. Doheny. The most merciless of the three is that in which Mr. Bryan is described as "continuing to breathe, although dead." This article gives an account of the meeting of the Democratic National Committee in Washington in January. Mr. Gilbert saw the erstwhile Presidential nominee there, pressed against the back wall of the meetingroom, "a spectator, wedged between a fat woman and a cub reporter." goes on:

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"The committee went in a body to pay its respects to Woodrow Wilson, but it did not even ask Mr. Bryan to make a speech or have a chair. Most of the time he was wandering about the lobby of the Hotel Lafayette, attracting no attention.

"Occasionally, a white-haired man would totter up to the desk and ask respectfully for 'Mr. Bryan.' Mr. Bryan would come forward, his scant hair hanging down over his coat collar, and lean his big ear against the lips of his superannuated admirer. A few words would be exchanged and Mr. Bryan would hurry away-nowhere, too important to waste his time upon a ghost from the past and too unimportant to command the time of any one in the present.

"Uncertain even of being sent to the next Democratic Convention, he has to pull the leg of local sentiment in Florida, where he now resides, by declaring for some preposterous Floridan named Murphree for President, in the hope of being thus sent as a delegate to New York. He is not ignored by design. He is ignored because he no longer counts. He reminds me of the passengers in 'Outward Bound,' who don't know they are dead and who go on drinking cocktails and exhibiting

their snobbishness on the famous ferry across the Styx."

Joseph P. Tumulty, Woodrow Wilson's secretary, appeals to Mr. Gilbert as "that rare sort of man who, when he is your friend, actually loves you." For most of us there is an element of self-interest in friendships. We profit by them in the sense that they leave us less lonely in the world. Or we get on through them. Or we magnify our selfesteem through them. But "Tumulty's nature," Mr. Gilbert assures us, "is too warm and too emotional for that." continues:

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"I have never been one of Tumulty's intimates. I could not join in the indiscriminate worship of Wilson, and I think he always regarded me as more or less an undesirable citizen. But there is not any one I would rather spend an evening with than Tumulty. He runs the whole gamut of emotions. He tells stories as no one else can tell them, for he is a natural and unconscious actor. And when you are through with such an evening you know a little more of the world than you did in the beginning.

"There are several ways of knowing the world. You may know it through action. You may know it through thinking about it as a man of intellect. Or you may know it through the heart as a man of feeling. The last is Tumulty's way. Tumulty loves it and laughs at it and weeps over it all in one breath.

"It was an odd partnership, that of Wilson and Tumulty - Wilson the cold Calvinist and Tumulty the warm Catholic; Wilson the instructive aristocrat and Tumulty the man of the people; Wilson cautious and suspicious and Tumulty impulsive almost to the point of recklessness; Wilson shrinking from men and Tumulty caring for nothing but men. Tumulty supplemented Wilson as no one else in the world could. Without him Wilson would have been almost helpless.

"Tumulty worshipped Wilson because he saw in him the very qualities he himself lacked. Wilson used Tumulty because he found in him the very qualities he himself lacked. If you could have rolled the two into one you would have had one of the world's really great men. And so far as he could Tumulty rolled himself into Wilson, contributing much to his fame. And it

THE AUTHOR OF "THE MIRRORS OF WASHINGTON"

Clinton W. Gilbert not only reflects character, but illuminates it, in his daily political correspondence.

was pathetic that he was somewhat out in the cold when the mourning over his hero went on."

Edward L. Doheny is presented as something of a psychological enigma. All that Mr. Gilbert gets out of his testimony before the Senate committee and his known acts are some "jigsaw scraps" of a personality. "A poor prospector who struck it rich, very rich indeed; a man who lends $25,000,000 to the President of Mexico; a man who lends or gives $100,000 to a Cabinet member from whom he expects a valuable lease, who sends about money in suitcases, who tears signatures from notes, who almost boasts that he will make $100,000,000 from naval oil lands