Volume IV Part 8 (1/2)
”Ye G.o.ds, what havoc does ambition make 'Mong all your works.”[223]
During the six or eight weeks that the Supreme Court sat each year, Marshall was the same in manner and appearance in Was.h.i.+ngton as he was among his neighbors in Richmond--the same in dress, in habits, in every way. Once a pract.i.tioner sent his little son to Marshall's quarters for some legal papers. The boy was in awe of the great man. But the Chief Justice, detecting the feelings of the lad, remarked: ”Billy, I believe I can beat you playing marbles; come into the yard and we will have a game.” Soon the Chief Justice of the United States and the urchin were hard at play.[224]
If he reached the court-room before the hour of convening court, he sat among the lawyers and talked and joked as if he were one of them;[225]
and, judging from his homely, neglected clothing, an uninformed onlooker would have taken him for the least important of the company. Yet there was about him an unconscious dignity that prevented any from presuming upon his good nature, for Marshall inspired respect as well as affection. After their surprise and disappointment at his ill attire and want of impressiveness,[226] attorneys coming in contact with him were unfailingly captivated by his simplicity and charm.
It was thus that Joseph Story, when a very young lawyer, first fell under Marshall's spell. ”I love his laugh,” he wrote; ”it is too hearty for an intriguer,--and his good temper and unwearied patience are equally agreeable on the bench and in the study.”[227] And Marshall wore well. The longer and more intimately men a.s.sociated with him, the greater their fondness for him. ”I am in love with his character, positively in love,” wrote Story after twenty-four years of close and familiar contact.[228] He ”rises ... with the nearest survey,” again testified Story in a magazine article.[229]
When, however, the time came for him to open court, a transformation came over him. Clad in the robes of his great office, with the a.s.sociate Justices on either side of him, no king on a throne ever appeared more majestic than did John Marshall. The kindly look was still in his eye, the mildness still in his tones, the benignity in his features. But a gravity of bearing, a firmness of manner, a concentration and intentness of mind, seemed literally to take possession of the man, although he was, and appeared to be, as unconscious of the change as he was that there was anything unusual in his conduct when off the bench.[230]
Marshall said and did things that interested other people and caused them to talk about him. He was noted for his quick wit, and the bar was fond of repeating anecdotes about him. ”Did you hear what the Chief Justice said the other day?”--and then the story would be told of a bright saying, a quick repartee, a picturesque incident. Chief Justice Gibson of Pennsylvania, when a young man, went to Marshall for advice as to whether he should accept a position offered him on the State Bench.
The young attorney, thinking to flatter him, remarked that the Chief Justice had ”reached the acme of judicial distinction.” ”Let me tell you what that means, young man,” broke in Marshall. ”The acme of judicial distinction means the ability to look a lawyer straight in the eyes for two hours and not hear a d.a.m.ned word he says.”[231]
Wherever he happened to be, nothing pleased Marshall so much as to join a convivial party at dinner or to attend any sort of informal social gathering. On one occasion he went to the meeting of a club at Philadelphia, held in a room at a tavern across the hall from the bar.
It was a rule of the club that every one present should make a rhyme upon a word suddenly given. As he entered, the Chief Justice observed two or three Kentucky colonels taking their accustomed drink. When Marshall appeared in the adjoining room, where the company was gathered, he was asked for an extemporaneous rhyme on the word ”paradox.” Looking across the hall, he quickly answered:
”In the Blue Gra.s.s region, A 'Paradox' was born, The corn was full of kernels And the 'colonels' full of corn.”[232]
But Marshall heartily disliked the formal society of the National Capital. He was, of course, often invited to dinners and receptions, but he was usually bored by their formality. Occasionally he would brighten his letters to his wife by short mention of some entertainment. ”Since being in this place,” he writes her, ”I have been more in company than I wish.... I have been invited to dine with the President with our own secretaries & with the minister of France & tomorrow I dine with the British minister.... In the midst of these gay circles my mind is carried to my own fireside & to my beloved wife.”[233]
Again: ”Soon after dinner yesterday the French Charge d'affaires called upon us with a pressing invitation to be present at a party given to the young couple, a gentleman of the French legation & the daughter of the secretary of the navy who are lately married. There was a most brilliant illumination which we saw and admired, & then we returned.”[234] Of a dinner at the French Legation he writes his wife, it was ”rather a dull party. Neither the minister nor his lady could speak English and I could not speak French. You may conjecture how far we were from being sociable. Yesterday I dined with M^r Van Buren the secretary of State.
It was a grand dinner and the secretary was very polite, but I was rather dull through the evening. I make a poor return for these dinners.
I go to them with reluctance and am bad company while there. I hope we have seen the last, but I fear we must encounter one more.[235] With the exception of these parties my time was never pa.s.sed with more uniformity. I rise early, pour [_sic_] over law cases, go to court and return at the same hour and pa.s.s the evening in consultation with the Judges.”[236]
Chester Harding relates that, when he was in Was.h.i.+ngton making a full-length portrait of the Chief Justice,[237] Marshall arrived late for the sitting, which had been fixed for eight o'clock in the evening.
He came without a hat. Congressman Storrs and one or two other men, having seen Marshall, bare-headed, hurrying by their inn with long strides, had ”followed, curious to know the cause of such a strange appearance.” But Marshall simply explained to the artist that the consultation lasted longer than usual, and that he had hurried off without his hat. When the Chief Justice was about to go home, Harding offered him a hat, but he said, ”Oh, no! it is a warm night, I shall not need one.”[238]
No attorney practicing in the Supreme Court was more unreserved in social conversation than was the Chief Justice. Sometimes, indeed, on a subject that appealed to him, Marshall would do all the talking, which, for some reason, would occasionally be quite beyond the understanding of his hearer. Of one such exhibition Fisher Ames remarked to Samuel Dexter: ”I have not understood a word of his argument for half an hour.” ”And I,” replied the leader of the Ma.s.sachusetts bar, ”have been out of my depth for an hour and a half.”[239]
The members of the Supreme Court made life as pleasant for themselves as they could during the weeks they were compelled to remain in ”this dismal” place, as Daniel Webster described the National Capital.
Marshall and the a.s.sociate Justices all lived together at one boarding-house, and thus became a sort of family. ”We live very harmoniously and familiarly,”[240] writes Story, one year after his appointment. ”My brethren are very interesting men,” he tells another friend. We ”live in the most frank and unaffected intimacy. Indeed, we are all united as one, with a mutual esteem which makes even the labors of Jurisprudence light.”[241]
Sitting about a single table at their meals, or gathered in the room of one of them, these men talked over the cases before them. Not only did they ”moot every question as” the arguments proceeded in court, but by ”familiar conferences at our lodgings often come to a very quick, and ... accurate opinion, in a few hours,” relates that faithful chronicler of their daily life, Joseph Story.[242] Story appears to have been even more impressed by the comradery of the members of the Supreme Court than by the difficulty of the cases they had to decide.
None of them ever took his wife with him to Was.h.i.+ngton, and this fact naturally made the personal relations of the Justices peculiarly close.
”The Judges here live with perfect harmony,” Story reiterates, ”and as agreeably as absence from friends and from families could make our residence. Our intercourse is perfectly familiar and unconstrained, and our social hours when undisturbed with the labors of law, are pa.s.sed in gay and frank conversation, which at once enlivens and instructs.”[243]
This ”gay and frank conversation” of Marshall and his a.s.sociates covered every subject--the methods, manners, and even dress of counsel who argued before them, the fortunes of public men, the trend of politics, the incident of the day, the gossip of society. ”Two of the Judges are widowers,” records Story, ”and of course objects of considerable attraction among the ladies of the city. We have fine sport at their expense, and amuse our leisure with some touches at match-making. We have already ensnared one of the Judges, and he is now (at the age of forty-seven) violently affected with the tender pa.s.sion.”[244]
Thus Marshall, in his relation with his fellow occupants of the bench, was at the head of a family as much as he was Chief of a court. Although the discussion of legal questions occurred continuously at the boarding-house, each case was much more fully examined in the consultation room at the Capitol. There the court had a regular ”consultation day” devoted exclusively to the cases in hand. Yet, even on these occasions, all was informality, and wit and humor brightened the tediousness. These ”consultations” lasted throughout the day and sometimes into the night; and the Justices took their meals while the discussions proceeded. Amusing incidents, some true, some false, and others a mixture, were related of these judicial meetings. One such story went the rounds of the bar and outlived the period of Marshall's life.
”We are great ascetics, and even deny ourselves wine except in wet weather,” Story dutifully informed his wife. ”What I say about the wine gives you our rule; but it does sometimes happen that the Chief Justice will say to me, when the cloth is removed, 'Brother Story, step to the window and see if it does not look like rain.' And if I tell him that the sun is s.h.i.+ning brightly, Judge Marshall will sometimes reply, 'All the better, for our jurisdiction extends over so large a territory that the doctrine of chances makes it certain that it must be raining somewhere.'”[245]
When, as sometimes happened, one of the a.s.sociate Justices displeased a member of the bar, Marshall would soothe the wounded feelings of the lawyer. Story once offended Littleton W. Tazewell of Virginia by something said from the bench. ”On my return from court yesterday,” the Chief Justice hastened to write the irritated Virginian, ”I informed M^r Story that you had been much hurt at an expression used in the opinion he had delivered in the case of the Palmyra. He expressed equal surprize and regret on the occasion, and declared that the words which had given offense were not used or understood by him in an offensive sense. He a.s.sented without hesitation to such modification of them as would render them in your view entirely unexceptionable.”[246]
As Chief Justice, Marshall shrank from publicity, while printed adulation aggravated him. ”I hope to G.o.d they will let me alone 'till I am dead,” he exclaimed, when he had reached that eminence where writers sought to portray his life and character.[247]
He did, however, appreciate the recognition given from time to time by colleges and learned societies. In 1802 Princeton conferred upon him the honorary degree of LL.D.; in 1806 he received the same degree from Harvard and from the University of Pennsylvania in 1815. In 1809, as we have seen, he was elected a corresponding member of the Ma.s.sachusetts Historical Society; on January 24, 1804, he was made a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences; and, in 1830, was elected to the American Philosophical Society. All these honors Marshall valued highly.
This, then, was the man who presided over the Supreme Court of the United States when the decisions of that tribunal developed the National powers of the Const.i.tution and gave stability to our National life. His control of the court was made so easy for the Justices that they never resented it; often, perhaps, they did not realize it. The influence of his strong, deep, clear mind was powerfully aided by his engaging personality. To agree with him was a pleasure.