Belles, beaux and brains of the 60's . de-vourer of books and ofwonderful assimilative ca-pacity. Astute and bestinformed, he was greatlyregarded by Mr. Davis as anadviser. With his conductof foreign affairs we maydiffer later, perhaps. Hemay have missed silver-linedopportunities in the over-reach for impossible goldenones. He may have de-ceived himself and the peo-ple at once, in his optimisticutterances as to intervention by the Powers, and he mayhave played the Confederates pawn abroad in a foolsgambit. But socially the man was delightful and many-sided, and as popular with the young as wit
Belles, beaux and brains of the 60's . de-vourer of books and ofwonderful assimilative ca-pacity. Astute and bestinformed, he was greatlyregarded by Mr. Davis as anadviser. With his conductof foreign affairs we maydiffer later, perhaps. Hemay have missed silver-linedopportunities in the over-reach for impossible goldenones. He may have de-ceived himself and the peo-ple at once, in his optimisticutterances as to intervention by the Powers, and he mayhave played the Confederates pawn abroad in a foolsgambit. But socially the man was delightful and many-sided, and as popular with the young as with the older setabout him. After the war Mr. Benjamin repeated the tri-umph of Disraeli, and by the same force of personality andbrain. He achieved, alone and as the best known represent-ative of a lost and a disaster-strewn Cause, the quickestadvance to a barrister ever known to the most conservativelegal system of the planet. Hebrew in blood, English in tenacity of grasp and purpose,*The Arabs call Jerusalem El Khuds (the Holy City).. JUDAH P. BENJAMIN BELLES, BEAUX AND BRAINS OF TEE SIXTIES 93 Mr. Benjamin was French in taste, jusque au bout des were his family, and they never visited Richmond. In-deed, in a knowledge of him extending to a decade before thewar I recall but one visit made by them to this side of thewater. Mrs. Benjamin had been Mile, de St. Martin andshe lived with her two grown daughters, permanently in Pariswhere the girls married. But the secretarys brother-in-law,Jules de St. Martin, was awhile in Richmond and later quitea toast in Baltimore society. Very small, faultlessly groomedand well equipped by travel and association, this gentlemanwas very much of a man. He was suave and decided and anexpert in the code, as I chanced to learn. The second Confederate attorney-general was a notedAlabamian, though of Virginia-Georgia descent. His father,Thomas Hughes Watts, of Fauquier county, Va., married in1818, Miss Prudence Hill, of Clarke county, Ga., a
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