The Five of Hearts

by Patricia O'Toole

  By February 4, Hay felt well enough so that he and Clara could host a dinner of their own, in celebration of their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary. It was a strange evening. Clara, whose waistline had followed an expansionist course for years, appeared in her bridal gown, leaving Henry Adams to wonder in tactful silence about the magnitude of the necessary alterations. Cabot and Nannie Lodge were present, which suggests that neither Clara nor Cabot fully apprehended the state of affairs between John and Nannie. “It was all kind and cordial and genial, but one must not stop to think,” Henry told Lizzie.

  Life on Lafayette Square had changed. Henry’s breakfast establishment still did a brisk trade, and his afternoons still ended with a walk and a cup of tea with Hay, but Hay’s elevation to secretary of state subtly altered their friendship. Hay, loyal and sensitive, tried to preserve the ease between them by insisting that his office meant nothing—that it was, as Adams put it, “pure fungoid, and not a part of his nature.” Alone they talked little of politics, but as Hay’s closest friend, Adams inevitably found himself listening to more Washington shoptalk than he cared to hear. Though he knew how to evade the questions of diplomats who flocked to his breakfast table in the hope of catching some hint of the secretary’s business, there seemed to be no defense against the insufferable Henry Cabot Lodge. One winter evening, after enduring an hour of “dreary Senatorial drivel” between Hay and Lodge on the subject of the peace treaty with Spain, Henry moaned to Lizzie, “I sit silent. What do I care whether the Treaty is ratified, or whether we take the Philippines?” Henry also sat silent as Cabot expressed “an earnest wish” that Hay “would not look so exceedingly tired when approached on business at the department” and Hay “with sobs in his voice assures me that the Senator gives him more trouble, about less matter, than all the governments of Europe, Asia and the Sulu Islands, and all the Senators from the wild West and the Congressmen from the rebel confederacy. Tell me, does patriotism pay me to act as a buffer-state?”

  Watching the political game at close range, Adams declared himself vastly relieved that Hay had not succeeded in getting him the London embassy. The only detail that gnawed at him was a rumor that he could have had the post if he had pressed for it. As Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes told the story years later, Adams had “wanted it handed to him on a silver platter.” Whatever Henry’s unconscious desire for the power and position of Adamses past, he regularly expressed the feeling that Fate had been kinder to him than to his friend in the State Department. “I’ve managed to drag on a degraded existence for the last thirty years without an office or an honor to my family-back, as far as I can see, all the better for freedom,” he told Lizzie early in 1899. But Henry was not sure that spending twenty years in the shadow of the White House had had a salutary effect on his character. As he confessed to an English friend, “I have grown so used to playing the spider, and squatting in silence in the middle of this Washington web, and I have seen so many flies and other insects caught and devoured in its meshes, that I have now a little the sense of being a sort of ugly, bloated, purplish-blue, and highly venomous hairy tarantula which catches and devours Presidents, senators, diplomates, congressmen and cabinet-officers, and knows the flavor of every generation and every country in the civilized world. Just now my poor friend Hay is caught in the trap, and, to my infinite regret, I have to make a meal of him as of the rest.”

  In February, as soon as the peace treaty cleared the Senate, the secretary of state turned his attentions to the Orient. Expansionists such as Roosevelt and Hanna had encouraged American businessmen to view the Philippines as a stepping-stone to the huge, untapped markets of the Far East, particularly China. (No one but a few peevish “aunties” thought to ask how many American goods a nation of starving peasants was likely to buy.) As a newcomer in the Pacific, the United States was in a delicate position. Since 1895, when China lost a war with Japan, the weakened imperial dynasty had been exploited by Europeans demanding one economic concession after another. One by one, China’s ports, mines, and railroads were falling into foreign hands. Hay’s challenge was to gain a commercial foothold for the United States without engaging in what he called “the great game of spoliation.”

  Aware that his ignorance of the Far East was almost as vast as Asia itself, Hay longed for the guidance of W. W. Rockhill, a distinguished Orientalist assigned to the American consulate in Athens for want of a more suitable post. But the congressional grip on State Department appointments kept Hay from naming so much as a boot-black, and he had to bide his time. When a death created an unexpected vacancy early in 1899, Hay pounced. Byzantine as it seemed to the uninitiated, W. W. Rockhill, the chief architect of Hay’s Far Eastern policies, would answer to the title of director, Bureau of American Republics.

  By late summer, the new director had fashioned a simple and ingenious piece of statecraft. In a note to be sent to the major European powers, the United States would acknowledge their respective spheres of influence in China and ask each to guarantee that its domain would be free of commercial discrimination.

  Rockhill’s note, signed by the president, inspired reams of piety, but none of the powers was willing to endorse the plan unless all of the others did. After a few months of corresponding privately with ambassadors and foreign ministers, Hay allowed someone in the State Department to leak news of the plan and to spread the rumor of its imminent acceptance. Overnight John Hay became as famous as Theodore Roosevelt and his Rough Riders. Hay’s “Open Door,” as the newspapers dubbed it, was foreign policy of a sort that made Americans feel proud. It avoided the “permanent alliances” George Washington had warned against in his farewell address, it protected China from further rapacity, and it leveled the playing field of commerce. Once the American acclaim began, no one in Europe dared to veer from the noble trail blazed by Secretary Hay, and Hay, banking on his luck, audaciously decided to interpret the silence as consent. All six powers were informed that since everyone had agreed, the arrangement would be regarded as “final and definitive.”

  The Open Door was a splendid little coup. But a bitter humiliation that unfolded during that same period deprived Hay of most of his joy. The Spanish-American conflict had drawn new attention to the isthmus of Panama, where a canal had been under construction, in fits and starts, since 1881. Expansionists, who viewed the canal as critical to America’s defense and foreign trade, believed that it was time for the United States to step in and complete the canal with American financing and supervision. But an old agreement with Great Britain stood in the way. Signed in 1850, the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty kept either country from acquiring exclusive use of the canal or asserting dominion over any part of Central America. In its day, Clayton-Bulwer was considered a triumph for the United States since it prevented Britain from gaining control of one of the most strategic strips of land in the Western Hemisphere. After the intoxications of the Spanish-American War, however, Americans newly aware of their muscle saw no point in subsidizing a canal they could not control. Shortly after Hay joined the State Department, President McKinley asked him to work out a cordial abrogation of Clayton-Bulwer and negotiate a new treaty.

  In theory, Hay was the ideal man for the job. The most popular diplomat ever to represent the United States at the Court of St. James’s, he had come home convinced that Anglo-American cooperation was the best guarantee of world peace and prosperity in the coming century. But in his grand dreams of partnership with England, Hay overlooked his partners in the U.S. Senate—with punishing results.

  The negotiations began smoothly enough. Hay asked his trusted London colleague Henry White to raise the treaty question with Lord Salisbury, the prime minister. Lord Salisbury invited White to his estate for the weekend, and on Saturday morning after breakfast they retired to the library for a chat. The foreign secretary immediately agreed to consider a replacement for Clayton-Bulwer. He would authorize Sir Julian Pauncefote, the English ambassador to Washington, to negotiate with Hay and asked only that the new arrangement levy
tolls on the ships of all nations. That understood, the lord and his sons treated White to an afternoon of shooting—“particularly pleasant,” White thought. In the evening he cabled his satisfying news to Hay.

  Hay’s troubles started soon after he opened talks with Pauncefote. Although the secretary made no secret of the proceedings, he had not officially informed the Senate of his intention to work out a new treaty, which gave Democrats an opportunity to hint darkly of “secret alliances” with England. Hay understood the accusation for what it was—pandering to the anti-English sentiments of Irish and German voters—and he was so indignant he refused to respond. But silence has a way of persuading critics that they are right, and the attacks continued. Hay had been “educated in the English school,” Senate Democrats sniffed. Irked by the unfairness of the jibe, McKinley asked his aides why no one had thought to say, “Yes, he was trained under Abraham Lincoln.”

  Though McKinley admired Hay for taking the high road, the secretary’s motives were not entirely pure. With no appetite for the donnybrooks that exhilarated Theodore Roosevelt and Henry Cabot Lodge, Hay simply found it easier to hold his tongue than defend himself. And in spite of the claim that he acted only in the best interests of America, Hay cared more for the good opinion of his friends in England than for the U.S. Senate, a body which he regarded as the bane of American diplomacy. Like secretaries of state before and since, Hay was often sorely tried by the constitutional requirement that treaties be ratified by a two-thirds majority of the Senate. As Hay saw it, the arrangement was fatally flawed: by allowing a treaty to be defeated with only one-third plus one of the votes, the provision gave the upper hand to the minority.

  Coupled with Hay’s suspicion that senators were, at bottom, a swinish lot, his frustrations with the Constitution inclined him to leave the Senate out of his transactions whenever he could. In his mind, the Open Door was a tour de force not only for its effects in China but also as a display of what a State Department could accomplish without senatorial fetters. Ultimately the abrogation of Clayton-Bulwer and the new terms drawn up by Hay and Pauncefote would have to be approved by the Senate, but Hay did what he could do to disarm the opposition. Forwarding the papers to Henry White in London, Hay explained that he had “tried to avoid entering into unnecessary details. In fact my principal purpose in drawing up the treaty was to avoid any contested points or anything which would cause acrimonious discussion in the Senate. I hope the Foreign Office will see with what sincere friendly purpose the treaty has been drawn, and will refrain from any changes or amendments, which, however meritorious in themselves, might cause the rejection of the treaty by exciting the opposition of one-third of the Senate.”

  Hay’s proposal gave the United States the right to build and operate the canal. Tolls would be the same for ships of all nations, as Lord Salisbury had requested. As neutral territory, the passage would not be fortified, and it would remain open to all, in war as well as in peace. A U.S. police force would keep order in the Canal Zone.

  On February 5, 1900, after a year of discussion, the American secretary and the English ambassador met in Hay’s office to sign their agreement. A block away, on H Street, Henry Adams was composing a letter to Lizzie Cameron. “At this instant, 11 A.M., while I write, Hay is probably signing with Pauncefote an abrogation of the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty! Hay himself actually trembles for fear that he should wake up and find that he dreamt it. He has given nothing for what a dozen Presidents have broken their necks to get.”

  In the State, War, and Navy Building, Hay and Pauncefote were waiting for the wax seals to harden on the documents. Hay pulled out his watch. Eleven o’clock precisely. He savored the moment. The English had tried to use the canal treaty as a bargaining chip in a long-standing quarrel over the boundary between Canada and Alaska, and Hay had refused on the ground that the two matters had nothing to do with each other. In the end, England surrendered all the advantages of Clayton-Bulwer while the United States conceded nothing. The secretary forwarded his masterpiece to the Senate and waited for the applause.

  Capitol Hill responded with a storm of abuse, attacking the secretary for style as well as substance. Hay had not bothered to consult the Foreign Relations Committee during his talks with Pauncefote, an oversight that senators read—correctly—as a sign of disdain. Nor did they share his vision of a neutral unfortified canal.

  Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, Hay noted acidly, was “the first to flop.” The American people, Senator Lodge told the secretary, “can never be made to understand that if they build a canal at their own expense and at vast cost, which they are afterwards to guard and maintain at their own cost, and keep open and secure for the commerce of the world at equal rates, they can never be made to understand, I repeat, that the control of such a canal should not be absolutely within their own power.” Despite years of Nannie’s tutelage, Pinky Lodge still could not turn a graceful sentence, but he knew where he stood.

  Next an enterprising newspaper reporter thought to ask the governor of New York, a former assistant naval secretary named Theodore Roosevelt, for his opinion of Hay-Pauncefote. Theodore administered a flogging, which the New York Sun ran on its front page.

  Hay was flabbergasted. “Et tu?” he shot back. “Cannot you leave a few things to the President and the Senate, who are charged with them by the Constitution?” Hay had based his plan for a neutral, unarmed zone on the Suez Canal, and naval authorities had assured him that the United States could ably defend its Central American interests with ships based in Puerto Rico and Hawaii.

  Unhumbled, Governor Roosevelt told Hay that his proposal was “fraught with very great mischief.” If a canal of the sort Hay wanted had been open during the Spanish-American War, Roosevelt argued, the Spanish could have sailed from the Caribbean to the Pacific to attack Dewey or the American West Coast. “If that canal is open to the warships of an enemy, it is a menace to us in time of war; it is an added burden, an additional strategic point to be guarded by our fleet. If fortified by us, it becomes one of the most potent sources of our possible sea strength. Unless so fortified it strengthens against us every nation whose fleet is larger than ours.”

  Hay was too stunned to perceive the merits of either argument. He accused Cabot of losing his nerve under pressure from Irish constituents, and he suspected Roosevelt of grandstanding for the 1900 Republican presidential nomination. He could not fathom how anyone “outside of a mad house could fail to see that the advantages were all on our side.” Convinced that he was right, Hay would concede only one error: “I underrated the power of ignorance and spite, acting upon cowardice.”

  Watching the hostilities from the safety of the sidelines, Adams at first saw nothing but the humor of his own position. Each afternoon when he and Hay wandered the streets above Lafayette Square, Adams listened in silence while Hay excoriated Cabot, and once a week, when Adams called on the Lodges, he suffered through Cabot’s philippics against Hay. Roosevelt’s gratuitous intrusion only added to the merriment. “You can imagine to what an extent the fat is in the fire!” Henry told Lizzie. Hay vowed to resign if the Senate defeated his treaty, and if Hay didn’t quit, Henry predicted, “he will certainly hamstring Teddy. Won’t it be fun?”

  After considering the likely personal consequences of the brawl, however, Adams grew alarmed. “I foresee the bitterest kind of breach between [Hay] and Cabot,” Henry told Lizzie. For Cabot he cared little, “but sister Anne [Nannie Lodge] will feel a quarrel, and if Hay is forced out of office by Cabot’s act, as seems to be rather expected, you can judge better than I whether sister Anne will feel it.” While Adams had come to loathe the sanctimonious Cabot, he treasured Nannie. And because of his own tie to a woman trapped in a difficult marriage, Henry undoubtedly understood that Nannie’s closeness to Hay was a much needed antidote to life with Cabot. A permanent rift between Hay and Lodge, which would drastically limit Nannie’s opportunities to see Hay, would be a serious loss.

  On March 13, exhausted after five weeks und
er fire, Hay resigned. Because of his impasse with the Senate, he told the president he had concluded that his usefulness was “at an end. I cannot help fearing also that the newspaper attacks upon the State Department, which have so strongly influenced the Senate, may be an injury to you, if I remain in the Cabinet.”

  McKinley returned Hay’s letter as soon as he read it. “Nothing could be more unfortunate than to have you retire from the Cabinet,” he insisted. “The personal loss would be great, but the public loss even greater. Your administration of the State Department has had my warm approval.” Promising to “cheerfully bear whatever criticism or condemnation may come,” McKinley urged Hay to “bear the atmosphere of the hour. It will pass away. We must continue working on the lines of duty and honor. Conscious of high purpose and honorable effort, we cannot yield our posts however the storm may rage.”

  A week later, revived by the warmth and strength of McKinley’s confidence, Hay felt bold enough to send the notes that informed the European powers they had agreed to the Open Door in China. “Hay has had some sunshine to make up for the failure of his Canal Treaty,” Henry wrote to Lizzie. The praise for the Open Door mystified Adams since he could not see that it bound anyone to anything, but Hay and Rockhill believed that their Open Door had “secured China’s independence and so served the cause of peace and civilization.” The secretary and his deft Orientalist were so sure of the permanence of their success that they were wholly unprepared for the anxious dispatches that soon began filtering in from Peking.