Quotes about William Walter Phelps
"William Walter Phelps, with all his millions, wears clothes which cost about twenty-five dollars a suit, and he likes a red necktie."
- from Carp's Washington by Frank G. Carpenter (newspaperman), McGraw Hill 1960.
"The only wise man is Willy Wally, and wisdom has cost him $250,000 for the reformer Eno, besides whatever the Blaine campaign thus far has come to. W.W.P. is to be our next Secretary of State;…"
- from the Letters of Henry Adams (historian) Vol. I 1858-1891, ed. Worthington Chauncey Ford, Houghton Miflin 1938, in a letter to John Hay (author and statesman) in 1884 deploring the rottenness of banking and politics.
"……a whisper (in the gossipy atmosphere of Samoa) echoes like W.W. Phelps's voice….."
- from the Letters etc., as above, in a letter to Ann Cabot Mills Lodge in 1890 from Samoa.
"I have not thanked you either for taking me to Teaneck, that Sunday. I never had really talked with Walter Phelps before, and I should not have felt like leaving the world without meeting so original and lovable a character. He is charming - mind and heart both - one of the fellows that ought to live forever to help sweeten a brackish world."
- from The Life of John Hay by William Roscoe Thayer, Vol. I, Houghton Miflin 1915, from a letter to Whitelaw Reid (journalist, politician, diplomat) in 1878.
Blaine urges Harrison and Phelps
"When the 1888 convention met, Blaine was in that same plight - he had to have a candidate or he would himself be made the nominee. He had written favoring Benjamin Harrison, but a more recent expression was needed. He, therefore, cabled Stephen B. Elkins urging a ticket of Harrison and Phelps - William Walter Phelps, Congressman from Englewood, New Jersey. In addition to my newspaper work I was acting as secretary for Elkins, and the Blaine cable came into my possession.
"The Blaine leaders finally lined up for Harrison, but they could not pull Phelps through. Phelps parted his hair in the middle and wore a bang down his forehead - slightly more of a bang than Elihu Root's. Had Phelps not been present personally in the convention, the question of his bang might never have come up; but with Phelps and his bang day after day in plain sight of the western delegates there was no hope that he could win their favor. Had they known Phelps better, they would have known an able, manly colleague."
- from As I Knew Them by Henry L. Stoddard (newspaperman), Harper and Brothers 1927.[Excerpts transcribed and contributed by Alex Phelps]
(Stephen B. Elkins and Elihu Root were politicians and statesmen.)
