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| Clarence Darrow |
Read Darrow's autobiography, "The Story of My Life" (Scribner, 1932), and you can see the great attorney's love for life, critical thinking, and the sea.
Darrow, famous for his courtroom oratory on behalf of (usually) the underdog or "the damned," was a complicated and compelling figure and a deep thinker.
Early in "Story" he contemplates the difference between youth and old age, using some nautical themes:
"The young man's reflections of unfolding life concern the future – the great, broad, tempestuous sea on whose hither shore he stands eagerly waiting to learn of other lands and climes. The reactions and recollections of the old concern the stormy journey drawing to a close; he no longer builds castles or plans conquests of the unknown; he recalls the tempests and tumults encountered on the way, and babbles of the passengers and crew that one by one dropped silently into the icy depths. No longer does the aging transient yearn for new adventures or unexplored highways. His greatest ambition is to find some snug harbor where he can doze and dream the fleeting days away. So, elderly men who speak or write turn to autobiography. This is all they have to tell, and they cannot sit idly in silence and wait for the night to come."
Darrow the philosopher sounds like another reasoned thinker, Richard Dawkins, in finding a humble perspective as he introduces his autobiography:"Doubtless a certain vanity has its part in moving me to write about myself. I am quite sure that this is true, even though I am aware that neither I nor any one else has the slightest importance in time and space. I know that the earth where I have spent my life is only a speck of mud floating in the endless sky. I am quite sure that there are millions of other worlds in the universe whose size and importance are most likely greater than the tiny graveyard on which I ride. I know that at this time there are nearly two billion other human entities madly holding fast to this ball of dirt to which I cling. I know that since I began this page hundreds of these have loosened their grip and sunk to eternal sleep. I know that for half a million years men and women have lived and died and been mingled with the elements that combine to make our earth, and are known no more. I know that only the smallest fraction of my fellow castaways have even so much as heard my name, and that those who have will soon be a part of trees and plants and animal and clay. Still, here am I sitting down, with the mists already gathering about my head, to write about the people, desires, disappointments and despairs that have moved me in my brief stay on what we are pleased to call this earth."
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| 1917 recruiting poster, courtesy NHHC |
Darrow's self-deprecation and sharp wit are revealed periodically. About his first name, Clarence, which he considered his "cross" to bear, he reveals: "The one satisfaction I have had in connection with this cross was that the boys never could think up any nickname half so inane as the real one my parents adorned me with."
He discusses books, reading and education; fundamentalism and science; free will and justice; inequality in society; civil rights and the Ku Klux Klan; prohibition; cause and effect; capital punishment; religion; and war, especially the First World War. WWI was thought then to be the war to end all wars.
In analyzing the "Great War" and its causes, Darrow understands Germany's desire for expansion and access to the Atlantic as well as England's desire for superiority in controlling the seas. "England wished to own the seas, because to control the seas meant to control the lands."
Darrow believed in building toward and sustaining peace, but his pacifism turned quickly to support for U.S. involvement after Germany invaded Belgium. "I discovered that pacifism is probably a good doctrine in time of peace," he wrote, "but of no value in war time."
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| Darrow and his nemesis William Jennings Bryan at the Scopes Trial |
"He had greatly changed in recent years. The one-time sense of humor that softened his nature had been driven out by disappointments and vain ambitions. In his last days he had the appearance of one who felt the injustice of many defeats and welcomed the chance to get even with an alien world. He did not grow old gracefully. Instead of disarming the enemy with a smile and a joke as once was his wont, he now snarled and scolded when any one stood in the way of his dreams ... The merry twinkle had vanished from his eyes, his head was entirely bald save for two tufts of bristles back of the ears, his thin lips set in a long straight line across his face, his huge jaw pushed forward, stern and cruel and forbidding, immobile and unyielding as an iron vise. His speculations had ripened into unchangeable convictions. He did not think. He knew. His eyes plainly revealed mental disintegration. He had always been inordinately conceited and self-confident, but he had not been cruel or malignant. But his whole makeup had evidently changed, and now he was a wild animal at bay. I told my associates that I could see the rapid decay that had come upon him. He had reached a stage of hallucination that would impel him to commit any cruelty that he believed would help his cause. History is replete with men of this type, and they have added sorrow and desolation to the world."
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| Daguerrotype of Ralph Waldo Emerson |
"Emerson long ago said that a good citizen should not be too obedient of the law. Men came before laws, and will be here after laws are in limbo. Nothing is so loved by tyrants as obedient subjects. Nothing so soon destroys freedom as cowardly and servile acquiescence. Men will never have any more liberty than they demand and are ready to fight and preserve."He condemned prohibition, comparing the Eighteenth Amendment to the alien and sedition laws that were passed under President John Adams but opposed by "the giant figure and vigorous intellect of Thomas Jefferson." When Jefferson became president he demanded Congress repeal the alien and sedition laws, which Congress, as the co-equal branch of government, did. "The statesman knows that laws should be like clothes, made to fit the citizens that make up the State," Darrow said.
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| Multilateral operations in the Mediterranean Sea ,March 26, 2019. (MC2 Krystina Coffey). |
"As a rule, I am not given to sentiment over inanimate things or historical events. But, somehow, I could never think of the Mediterranean Sea, much less look at it, without being profoundly moved by its remarkable story. The earliest, and even the latest civilization was closely hugged her shores. The first knowledge we have of man's origin and development clings to its blue waters. The first ships of which we have record sailed those beautiful waters. One after another, nations and civilizations have risen and vanished around the Mediterranean Sea. Egypt, Asia Minor, Arabia, Syria, Greece, and the Roman world; Spain, Italy, France, all have been washed by this sea. The Pharaohs, Caesar, Pompey, Hannibal, Anthony and Cleopatra, too, made the Mediterranean immortal in history, song and story. Even now it lies in the heart of the civilization of the world. Most of the history of the Western world has been written there, and no other body of water anywhere near its size has the same importance in the world."Darrow's worldview is understandably Western-oriented. No doubt, he would have benefited from travel and more exposure to Asia. Nevertheless, he experienced and appreciated his Hawaii when he visited in the early 1930s. Then and now, Hawaii is a melting pot of East and West.
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| A view of Diamond Head Crater from the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific, "Punchbowl" in August 2017. (Master Sgt. Kendra M Owenby) |
Darrow closes his book with this passage, reminiscent of Mark Twain's love for the Hawaiian Islands, again with a maritime perspective:
Writing at 75, Darrow also expressed a longing to revisit Europe and see the Mediterranean once more, traveling across the Atlantic by ship, and seeing that voyage again as a metaphor to life's journey. How we plan and conduct our lives requires flexibility and resilience: "The mariner who steers his ship across the sea does not fasten the rudder so that he will straight ahead; the best he can do is to change his course according in time and tide and wave and wind, keeping in view only the general direction and the journey's end.""[F]rom the morning when I opened my eyes to see Diamond Head towering from the soft South Seas, standing guard, with its huge light at its pinnacle, over this picturesque place, to the afternoon when I slowly floated away, watching Diamond Head fade from my sight, lost in the mist, I loved Honolulu and the island that it adorns. I realize that many things enter into one’s likes and dislikes of people and places, and I am aware that everything somehow seemed to conspire to impress me with the beauty and charm of this land; somehow, I have never seen such a gem as Oahu, rising from the mighty ocean that rolls over the coral reefs, to wash the shores of that fairyland. Her gentle mountains, her tropical forestry, her warm, hospitable people, and the perfume of flowers in varieties unlike anything I have found anywhere else will be among my most lasting and pleasing memories. How kind and friendly people were! I dare not attempt to speak of them individually, for it is not easy to say that one impressed me more than another; but some portraits are indelibly etched upon my brain, and some pictures will reappear and delight me to the last of my days. I would like very much to go back, to see and enjoy it all once more, as it is. And I should like to find it still more enchanting in that Nature specially fitted this magic spot to help work out the old problem of race with its loves, its hatreds, its hopes and fears. It seems fit that the Hawaiian Islands, basking in the great sea between the oldest and newest civilizations of the world, might one day lead the union of the diverse races of man. I would like to believe that this favored land might prove to be the place where the only claim to aristocracy would be the devotion to justice and truth and a real fellowship on earth. Perhaps I am only dreaming about Honolulu. But whether asleep or awake, I trust I may see it all again ... away from the stress and strain of court and contention to rest and talk, and even listen, about the endless problems that have ever been too deep and complicated for the minds of men. From there, I would like to gaze again upon those wonderful waters that have come almost a third of the distance around the earth to greet and charm me. I would like once more to watch the rows upon rows of waves as they dash into foam and iridescent colors over the coral reefs that protect the shore... I hope I shall see Honolulu again, its palms, its Pali and Diamond Head, its flowers and friends – and if I weary of too much beauty and joy, I may steal, once more, to the shelter of that veranda beside the sea for a still longer siesta in the shade of the cocoanut (sic) trees, close my eyes to all else, rest my mind from thinking, let the lull of the salt breeze soothe my senses, and mayhap sweetly dream that I am softly sailing out over the languorous Pacific, midst showers of 'liquid sunshine' – surrounded by daylight and moonlight rainbows – never to come back again."
Oahu (NASA)
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