A NEW BOOK: Gubernatorial Spoon River*

A NEW BOOK

Gubernatorial Spoon River*

The popular way to look at politicians is as the knaves of the human deck. But Frederick L. Collins, veteran journalist,has gone out and captured 14 of them in the gubernatorial stage and labeled them Our American Kings. Mr. Collins isn’t a Lytton Strachey, but he doesn’t aim to be. He went to take notes on the personalities and home life of Governors in their official habitats and he did so with good-natured appreciation:

Alfred E. Smith of New York. “After dinner, in the study with the men, Al Smith was at his best. He is a great actor; not a heel comedian like Willie Collier, who stands in one spot and gets his effect, but an all-over-the-lot acrobatic performer like Douglas Fairbanks. He gets out on the floor and acts out his scenes, puts his hands on the arms of your chair, shakes his fist at an imaginary enemy, and sinks into exhausted laughter at the end of his own story. His best ones were about prohibition and the Ku Klux Klan.”

E. F. Morgan of West Virginia. “The big man laughed all over,dislodging two heavy wisps of white hair, which he kept pushing straight back from his round young face. During the days I spent with Governor Morgan at Charlestown, in his office and in his home, he never got those two wisps to stay where he put them. They represent, I should say, the two most worrisome problems of his otherwise unruffled life.”

Ragnvald A. Nestos of North Dakota. “When he sits on a chair he obliterates it; he throws back his great shoulders, spreads his elbows and knees, settles and solidifies as if he were a statue in the park. He looks like Henry Ward Beecher with a touch of Barnum and a clout or two of John L. Sullivan. He is Paul Whiteman with a Babe Ruth punch. He is an American viking.”

Albert C. Ritchie of Maryland. “He was tall, straight, vigorouslyimpressive; a gray-haired John Barrymore with eyeglasses; or rather John Barrymore as he might have looked if he had gone in for real estate or automobiles instead of for Shakespeare. He moved quickly and spoke brightly, as if he were in the advertising business. A little too handsome, a little too slim-waisted —and much too busy.”

A. Victor Donahey of Ohio. “He wanted me to come to breakfast. . . . I wasn’t sure, then, that I liked Donahey; and he-men who bang the table and shout about virtue and raise large families are a bit terrifying early in the morning. . . .

“At breakfast he was assertive, but not deafeningly so. … I was impressed with the fact that Governor Donahey would be a very nice fellow if he would forget that he was an honest man and let himself go. …

“Mrs. Donahey is a peach. She’s had twelve children—ten are living—and she’s listened to Vic’s banging since 1897. . . .”

J. A. O. Preus of Minnesota. “But Jake doesn’t laugh at politics. He takes it as seriously as most people take mah jong; and he plays the game day and night. ‘He’s the best d— officeholder in the world,’ one of his political opponents told me. He never leaves his desk until everything is cleaned up and in good shape. Then he’ll goout and address 40 million picnics, and arrive at every one on time. When it comes to political meetings, Jake’s a regular Paul Revere.”

John Blaine of Wisconsin. “At the election in November, Blaine ofBoscobel received 336,000 votes; his opponent a little more than 100,000!

“‘That’s a great record!’ I exclaimed.

“‘What? Mine?’ laughed the Governor. ‘That’s nothing compared with Calamity’s—Calamity Mechtilde De Kol, I mean—why, her record shows 28 pounds of butter in seven days, and if she hadn’t been such a delicate feeder—’

” ‘John,’ put in Mrs. Blaine sweetly, ‘Mr. Collins came to see us, not our cows.’

“And I never did hear about Calamity’s indigestion.”

Percival Baxter of Maine. “The Governor is a character. Bachelor. Tall, strong and pink. Forty-six or 47 in the record books, but much younger with his hat on. ‘Just a nice age!’ as one Maine woman expressed it. Rich, too. It’s a shame he isn’t married. But I looked vainly in his office and study and bedroom for a sign of an impending romance. On his desk are 23 ivory images,—dogs, elephants, lions, rabbits, ducks, lizards, eagles, horses, cats and one ‘hanatonosawa-emikaarima’—but no women.”

Gifford Pinchot of Pennsylvania. “Mrs. Pinchot’s blue slippers and silken ankles appeared at the top of the stairs —quite the smartest slippers and the nicest ankles I have ever seen in an Executive Mansion. As she descended rapidly, drawing on an Egyptian sweater over her American housedress, I could see that she was tall, like her husband, and slender, too; but of stately slenderness—not a lanky one like Gifford’s. . . . She is a beautiful woman, Cornelia Pinchot, with a strong body and a stronger face, and a deep, room—filling voice which manages somehow to be inconsistently feminine; and she is not afraid to be intelligent. I liked her. But, then, I am no judge. I always did like red-haired women.”

George Silzer of New Jersey. “George Silzer has brains—enough to be a lawyer and a judge, enough to amass a considerable fortune; he has a character—enough to be a big man in the legal, financial and religious life of his State; he has culture—enough to talk easily and colorfully of men and affairs in the new and old worlds; he has charm—enough to command not only the franchise of his fellow—citizens but their insistent demand that he leave his chosen work to become their Chief Executive.”

A. J. Groesback of Michigan. “. . . is one of three best Governors upon whom I have stumbled in my gubernatorial marathon from coast to coast. . . .

“He pulls his black hat upon his bulletlike head, clamps the brim over his heavy eyebrows, sinks his neck into his back, and squares off his great shoulders as if he were going to hit you in the jaw. Then he’s ready to say ‘Good morning.'”

Pat M. Neff of Texas.

You’d never think I’d take a drink. I haven’t.

You’d never think I’d take a smoke. I haven’t.

You’d never think I’d shoot a gun. I haven’t.

You’d never think I’d bait a hook. I haven’t.

You’d never think I’d any fun. I haven’t.

‘”The first two charges were true,’ he told me, as we walked under the shade-trees from the ‘Capitol to the Governor’s mansion. ‘I don’t smoke. And I don’t drink. Not even coffee or tea. Just water and milk.'”

Friend W. Richardson of Californias “As he talks, especially as he becomes interested in one of his favorite topics—economy, for instance—he looks out at you from under extraordinarily heavy eyebrows, and his eyes snap and his brows twitch. He buries superficial crudities under a river of picturesque language, which flows from a mountain of facts. Suddenly, you do think that he’s the Governor, and you understand how it is that in the end he ‘gets’ ’em.”

Louis Hart of Washington. “First he was a lawyer; then an insurance agent; for 14 years he was secretary of the Odd Fellows in the State of Washington. He joined the Maccabees and the Elks, the Masons and the Red Men, the Ancient Order of United Workmen; in fact, he joined everything that came to Washington. He never made any money, but he made a lot of friends. He became ‘Brother Hart’ to thousands of his fellow-citizens. And after a while he loomed up as a good man to have as Lieutenant-Governor. But nobody thought of running Louis Hart for Governor—and nobody ever would—if Governor Lister hadn’t taken ill and abdicated, leaving the office to easy-going Louis.”

*OUR AMERICAN KINGS—Frederick L. Collins—Century ($2.50).