|
If the name Villard means anything to American readers these days, they probably think
of Oswald Garrison Villard, the editor and author long associated with the New York
Post and the liberal magazine The Nation. This book, however, brings back to
literary life Oswald's father Henry Villard, who arrived in New York from his native
Germany in 1853 penniless and without a word of English and went on to become a famous
(and immensely wealthy) journalist, newspaper owner and railroad magnate before his death
in 1900.
Alexandra Villard de Borchgrave is Henry Villard's great-granddaughter. Her collaborator
John Cullen is a scholar, translator and writer. The exact nature of their collaboration
is not spelled out, which is a pity; the book is vividly and perceptively written, and it
would be nice to know exactly how to apportion the credit.
Henry Villard (born Heinrich Hilgard) came to America largely to escape an autocratic
father and a highly regimented but personally galling upbringing in Germany. He manifested
his free spirit even as he got off the boat by Americanizing his name. The first two years
or so of his life in America are an incredible odyssey of temporary menial jobs --- barrel
maker, bartender, manual laborer, door-to-door salesman --- which nearly crushed his
hopes. He traveled all over the Midwest, but was thoroughly miserable most of the time. He
does not seem even to have learned much English during that wanderjahr. What he had
going for him was a basic faith in his own destiny and an uncanny ability to ingratiate
himself with influential people.
His first break came in 1858 when he was hired to cover the epochal Lincoln-Douglas
debates for a German-language paper in New York City. Typically, he met both Lincoln and
Douglas and was soon on cordial terms with both men. His English improved rapidly, and
when the Civil War broke out three years later he became the star front-line
correspondent, first for the New York Herald and later for its rival, the Tribune.
Villard gained great fame, but not much money, as a war reporter. This biography
reflects the fact that he himself regarded his Civil War experiences as the greatest
events of his life. The war narrative (Villard was an eyewitness at First Bull Run,
Fredericksburg, and Shiloh, among other bloody battles) is colorfully written, horrifying
in its grisly detail, and extensive. It takes up fully one-third of the book and dwarfs in
interest the many years of postwar financial wheeling and dealing that made him rich,
temporarily lost him his fortune and then finally restored it. The two authors have not
found the means to make complex railroad financial transactions as interesting as warfare;
one wonders if any author could.
Along the way, though, they paint a rounded picture of a complex and fascinating man ---
filled with class prejudices inculcated in his youth in Germany, both forthright and
crafty in his business dealings, prone to judge people by outward appearances, dogged by
poor health but incurably optimistic even at the worst of times ("he prepared for
luck as others might prepare for trouble"). True to his genius for befriending great
people, he married the daughter of William Lloyd Garrison and was an early associate of
Thomas Edison, who confessed that he could never quite understand him.
De Borchgrave and Cullen have done a fine job of bringing this interesting but now largely
forgotten man to life on the page. One major source for them was Villard's own
autobiographical writings --- an account of his youth written in German, and one of his
American years written in English. The authors recreate the sense of a country drifting
irresistibly toward catastrophe in the years leading up to the Civil War and they have a
nice sense of the larger society within which Villard moved during his American years (he
died, wealthy and influential, in 1900). They have a knack for striking off memorable
character portraits of those, both famous and obscure, whose lives intersected with their
subject's. This is biography set against a background of memorable history. It is
respectful but not worshipful. It is a book that Henry Villard deserved.
--- Reviewed by Robert Finn (Robertfinn@aol.com)
© Copyright 1996-2010, Bookreporter.com. All rights reserved.
|
