Dumbauld letters unique look into early local politics
It’s not right to read someone else’s mail. But I suppose it’s OK if the mail has turned 90 and everyone is dead. So let’s peek inside some letters addressed to and preserved by a young man from Uniontown; by name, Edward Dumbauld.
From his mother Lissa, no doubt written at the Dumbauld residence on South Mount Vernon Avenue (where WMBS is now headquartered): “I surely could not live without good little boy.” Edward was a law student at Harvard. The year was 1927. He was 22 years old. “When I think of what a good luf (love) I have it makes me very, very happy.”
The sense of maternal affection is overwhelming. Smothering might be a better term. “My luf always passes his examations, and he always know the right thing to do, and he always does it. I know he will be a leader.”
“Eddie,” as friends called him, did became a leader; at an early age, with help from his father, he became Fayette County chairman of the Democratic Party; later he was elected a county judge; in the early 1960s, he was nominated and confirmed unanimously by the U.S. Senate for a long-time posting to the federal bench.
He was also a leading literary light. In 1990, Eddie received a Thomas Jefferson Foundation Gold Medal. His “Thomas Jefferson: American Tourist” is a gem of a book. He could have made a living as a writer.
From his father Horatio, a long-time county judge himself: “I am reminded by the coming of Sunday night that we have a ‘boy’ away from home, and he will want to know something of the happenings since Tuesday.” The date was Sept. 25, 1927. Eddie was at Harvard, a year after graduating from Princeton.
(That was another of the ways Uniontown was different back then: it wasn’t at all unusual for Uniontown boys — well-bred, smart Uniontown boys — to attend Ivy League schools. More than a few of Eddie’s high school classmates did.)
In this letter to Eddie, Horatio recounted the recent death of “one of my best friends. … An extreme concourse of people” attended the funeral service of William Wood on a “beautiful sunny Sunday afternoon,” Eddie’s father wrote. “Genial, gentlemanly gentle Bill was gone.”
The same letter contained the latest political scuttlebutt from the courthouse. A friend of Eddie’s had been “gypped” out of the nomination for county commissioner by the likes of the H.C. Frick Company. Shenanigans took place in the likeliest of locales, Horatio said, “Georges Township, precinct one.”
“Cal is swearing revenge and says he will put some of the crooks in jail … if it takes him ten years. … He needs you here to help aid and assist in reforming the elections.”
One can’t but help feel that Horatio was laying it on pretty thick. As much as Lissa, he too wanted Eddie back in town.
At Harvard, Eddie served as president of the student Democratic club. As such, he had contact with any number of important national figures. Then as now, elites responded to a Cambridge summons.
The two greatest newspapermen of the day wrote Dumbauld in his capacity as head of Harvard Democrats. Walter Lippmann, invited by Eddie to speak to a university audience, politely declined.
A few weeks later, on Aug. 28, 1928, H.L. Mencken, as was his custom, wrote back with more verve. “My threat to go on the stump for (Democratic presidential nominee Al) Smith was I fear mainly rhetoric. … I’ll confine my pronunciamientos on the great subjects now baffling the nation to my usual articles. If I do so, I’ll certainly want to make my first appearance before the Harvard Democratic Club.”
Mencken was being wicked, as usual. He was a Republican — albeit, a liberal Republican, of which there was more than a handful in those days.
In March of that presidential election year, Norman Thomas, the well-known and highly-respected socialist (yes, socialism was afforded political elbow room in those days) wrote hilariously to Eddie, after receiving an invitation to address the Harvard Democrats, apparently accompanied by Eddie’s words of praise for the party.
“… What do you drink at Harvard?” he asked incredulously. Thomas called the Democratic Party “the party of the old Southern slave-owning hierarchy and the modern bourbon South, the party of Tammany Hall and A. Mitchell Palmer.
“… I would almost pay my expenses to Boston to give you a little history of the Democratic party. … In the house of Christian Science, I suppose it’s possible to believe that by diligent exercise of mind, you can make the Democratic party what it isn’t.”
I’d love to know Eddie’s reaction to the Thomas note. Did he grin? Did he recoil in anger? Did he nod in recognition? I wish there was a letter to answer the questions.
Richard Robbins lives in Uniontown and is the author of two books — Grand Salute: Stories of the World War II Generation and Our People. He can be reached at dick.l.robbins@gmail.com.