Hot Time in the Old Town - Edward Kohn [76]
He is a tall, powerfully built and strikingly handsome man. His brow is broad and high and his large, firmly curved nose, the mark of ambition and command, juts out between dark, hazel eyes that kindle and flash.
His head is thickly covered with black wavy hair, which curls over and conceals the tips of his finely formed and characteristic ears. His hair is so long at the back that it curves upward from the coat collar. His jaws are wide and strong. His chin is massive, the chin of a born fighter. His upper lip is long and his mouth is large and mobile, almost too large. Mr. Bryan’s mouth is the least pleasant feature in his face. When he speaks he uses his lips as though his teeth projected and there is a curious lisping or hissing sound from many of his words. His neck is thick and sinewy.
His head is massive and high, the sign of a reverent nature. His arms are very long and his hands are big, sinewy hands, carpenter’s hands, practical hands, with strong spatulate fingers, a curious thing to find in an idealist. Mr. Bryan’s hands are not those which are usually owned by imaginative men, and they go far to prove his wife’s often-repeated assertion that he is a deliberate, slow-thinking and laborious man. His legs which were hidden from the audience by the pulpit, are thick and muscular. His feet are broad. He was dressed in a black suit, with a sack coat and a white tie. A tiny diamond sparked on his shirt front.
Bryan held up a thick sheaf of pages, his face pale and his hands shaking, and began to speak. He held the pages close to his face, lowering and raising the manuscript again and again. Perhaps not used to standing in a fixed spot during his speeches, he swayed from side to side as he shifted his weight from one foot to the other. He did not attempt oratorical techniques of any sort and was hardly recognizable as one of America’s greatest public speakers. “It was not the old Bryan of dash and fire, but a careful man, treading unknown soil,” one man observed.
Within five minutes the crowd began to leave. Bryan appeared not to notice, but Mary Bryan watched the exodus closely and with a worried expression. For the first twelve minutes of what would be a hundred-minute speech, no one in the audience even applauded. Within fifteen minutes, perhaps 2,000 people had left the auditorium, although one New York paper estimated departures at over 5,000. With hundreds of people leaving every minute, the very din of so many shoes made his speech almost impossible to hear.
In the midst of unbearable heat, as it became clear that there would be no repeat of the much-heralded “Cross of Gold” speech, few saw any reason to stay. Some speculated that perhaps as many as two-thirds of the seats were empty by the time Bryan sat down. Others suggested that some people stayed out of “pity” or that so many silverites had come East for the big speech they could not leave before it was over. Many papers noted that the Garden was packed by Tammany “heelers,” loyal party men who had been ordered to stay. Clearly, though, the mass of New Yorkers who had come for the big show was disappointed.
The decision to read the manuscript had been a strategic one, as Bryan knew the text would be reprinted nationally the next day. Yet it was also a tactical error. His success at the Chicago convention had resulted less from the actual text of the speech than from his oratory and its frenzied reception. Had he caused an equivalent stir in hostile New York, this would have been the main story across the country the following day. As it was, he might have indeed given a “temperate and masterly effort,” according to one paper, but most would have agreed with the Tribune’s editorial headline, “MR. BRYAN’S LABORIOUS FAILURE.”
With Bryan’s words overshadowed by the departure of his audience, the significance of the