Death of Depew

Later than it does to most men, Death came last week to Chauncey Mitchell Depew, after-dinner orator, optimist, railroad lawyer, spectator of U. S. national affairs since the Mexican War, aged 94 years less three weeks. A bronchial infection, picked up after a winter in Florida, turned into pneumonia in Manhattan. Two bishops and a Fifth Avenue rector officiated at the funeral service. Thousands of dignitaries attended or despatched their respects.

"I have lived long because I could laugh at anything," Chauncey Depew used to say. Arthur Brisbane, Hearst writer, who usually has a pat last word to say on any subject, observed that Napoleon, who seldom laughed, did not live 93 years but that "he did live more in one day than amiable Mr. Depew in all his 94 years."

Nevertheless, Chauncey Mitchell Depew's was a full life, based on an alert brain, a well-guarded stomach and a useful diaphragm. The diaphragm's usefulness was revealed to him by a schoolmaster at Peekskill, N. Y., his birthplace. The other schoolboys recited their orations. Chauncey would offer original compositions. His master began an oratorical training which was completed at Yale and on the political stump. He declaimed his way into the New York Assembly. On the advice of Commodore Vanderbilt, whose railroads he was to help run for the rest of his life, he renounced politics as a career. Speech-making thereafter became his "relaxation," his theory being that the brain cells he used during business hours could take a rest while his speechmaking cells were active. By his own estimate, he addressed three banquets per week "in the season" for 50 years. It was his practice to skip all courses up to the roast when dining in public, and to drink champagne only.

Among his most famed speeches, away from the groaning board, were speeches at the unveiling of the Statue of Liberty, the opening of the Chicago World's Fair, the centennial of Washington's inauguration, his nomination of President Benjamin Harrison. An annual event was his report to the Union League Club, in Manhattan, on his summers in Europe. At the Republican National Convention in 1916, Senator Harding called on him unexpectedly during a lull in the proceedings. Aged 82, he extemporaneously spellbound the hall for 45 minutes. Four years later he repeated the feat.

The Republican Party owed thanks to Chauncey Depew from its inception. He stumped for its first candidate, John C. Fremont, in 1856, and attended every Republican convention from 1860 to 1920. All the Presidents from Lincoln to Harding knew him well. In 1888, he himself received 99 votes for the nomination, but withdrew in favor of Harrison, who later asked him to be Secretary of State. He declined, having the presidency of the New York Central R. R. to attend to. In 1899 he entered the Senate, but his two terms were chiefly sociable. Politics, with him, was a sideline. Business came first, then speechmaking, then living long.

He had one son (Chauncey Mitchell Depew Jr.). He remained board chairman of the New York Central up to his death. A few hours after he died, steelworkers swung the final girder into place atop the pinnacle of his last project, the 36-story New York Central Building behind the Grand Central station, dominating famed Park Avenue.

Words of farewell to a man who departs finally from the public scene, are often concluded with a salute to his successor in name and potential fame. Such a salute might have speeded the rhythm of many an editorial last week, had not Ganson Goodyear Depew died just four years and four days before his Granduncle Chauncey. The fame of the grandnephew when he died at the age of 29, was universal only in his home city, Buffalo. But that he would become a U. S. Senator, at least, was the expectation of many discerning older men, including no doubt his optimistic granduncle. Tall, handsome, polished, enthusiastic, he too had the gift of oratory. Among those who had reason to remember a Depew that might have been, was Herbert Hoover. Ganson Depew, in his most memorable speech, nominated Mr. Hoover for the U. S. Presidency in a "Republican Convention" which he had himself organized with unparalleled success at Yale University in 1920.