LD 71/3 -NRLF LIBRARY OF THE University of California. AajjL. Gl FT OF ^w^vAA/vr" Clas'^ ''f'.IWi ^ s^ William Kneeland Townsend COMMEMORATIVE ADDRESSES William Kneeland Townsend COMMEMORATIVE ADDRESSES AT THE YALK I^AW SCHOOL June; i8, 1907 NEW HAVEN : THE TUTTI^E, MOREHOUSE & TAYI.OR PRESS 1907 or THi UNIVERSIIY ; or >r^: *-'•' A^ UNIVERSti Of The following Minute is taken from the records of the Law School : " The Faculty of the Yale Law School have learned with deep sorrow of the death of Judge Townsend. He became Professor of Pleading in the School in 1881, giv- ing also instruction in Contracts. On the foundation of the Edward J. Phelps Professorship of Contracts and Commercial Law in 1887, he Vv'as appointed to that chair and then surren- dered the subject of Pleading to take up those of Admiralty and Sales with the graduate class. After his appointment as Circuit Judge of the United States he soon found his engage- ments in the Circuit Court of Appeals in New York such as to oblige him to relinquish to others the work of instruction in the branches which he previously taught, but he retained his seat on the Governing Board, and took an active and helpful interest in the management of the general affairs of the institution. He was a born teacher. He had a wide knowledge of the law, and had it at read)- command in the class-room. He was quick to appreciate the difficulties that a student might find embarrassing and no less prompt in suggesting a way out of them, which seemed simple after he had suggested it. His uniform courtesy and consideration toward all endeared him to his classes as they did to his associates. To the Bi-centennial volume of legal studies, prepared by the Faculty in 1901, he contributed four papers of especial value. To give fuller expression to their sense of the value of the services rendered by Judge Townsend to the Law School, the Faculty request the Dean to arrange for a public meeting with commemorative addresses, at Hendrie Hall, at an early day." 16688? Tlie following telegram received by the Dean of the Law School from Mr. Justice Brewer of the Supreme Court of the United States was read at the meeting in commemoration of Judge Townsend : "Unable to attend this evening, I must add my tribute to the memory of Judge Townsend. Clear-headed, studious, faithful, he filled every place in life to which he was called. The light of every gathering, the pride of countless friends, he was of the noblest type of Yale graduates. A Yale Commence- ment without him will seem like a rose bush without a bloom." COMMEMORATIVE ADDRESSES President HadlEy : We have met this evening for some words in commemoration of a great man who has just left this School and New Haven and this community. The opening address, as is fitting, will be by the Chief Justice of the State. REMARKS OF CHIEF JUSTICE BALDWIN. It is one of the sayings of Euripides that riches are good and strength is good, but the best thing is to be beloved of many friends. That possession beyond price Judge Townsend had. We are told that every man has more friends than he knows. Most men, at least here, in the land of the Puritans, feel much more friendship for those about them than they ever express, by look or word. It was not so with Judge Townsend. He made others feel that he took an interest in them, and a real inter- est. He did not blush to tell them so. If he heard a pleasant thing said about one whom he knew well, he enjoyed repeating it to him. He could frankly express to another his own appreciation of him, and do it as a simple and natural thing. With a warm heart, a winning smile, a ready hand, a cheery voice, quick humor, and sympathies no less quick, he became the life of every circle into which he entered. Being agreeable, it has been said, is a gift from heaven, not else to be attained. We may learn manners. Emerson declares that they make the man. They certainly lend to strength and cul- ture a grace that makes them doubly valuable ; but there is a personal charm possessed by some men and more women that no pains can reproduce in another. No one who knew Judge Townsend, though it were but slightly, failed to remark his engaging manners, nor to see that they were of that genuine and unaf- fected kind that comes from within. They were not put on. They belonged to his disposition, and were its necessary expression. Schiller has compressed into six words a world of philosophy : " Die Liebe ist der Liebe Preis." Judge Townsend had the love of men because he gave them his. I first knew him as a student at Yale College. He was not forgetful of what was to be gained there in learning and culture, but I think his heart went out most of all to his classmates and the social life that opens out so delightfully around the Yale undergrad- uate who enters it with a sympathetic spirit. He was a universal favorite. Billy Townsend was welcome everywhere. He entered the Yale Law School soon after I had commenced to give some instruction here. His col- lege days had been pleasant ones. They had also done him good service in preparing him for the work of the world. The culture that an academic under- graduate may be expected to acquire is not simpl}^ a matter of learning. Life on a college campus is life in a little social world. There is set up there a school of character. The youth is introduced to manhood. He is introduced to men. There is something of the refining and restraining influence of the family. It is a larger circle, but tliere are the young, guarded and disciplined by their elders, and insensibly led to walk in the same ways, to think their thoughts, to look up to them as masters in conduct as well as in science. All this belongs to the secondary stage of liberal education. He who enters a professional school steps upon the third and final stage of liberal education : final, so far as the actual work of scholastic instruc- tion can give it. From this stage he must pass directly into the business, working world. Many a man wakes to a new life, develops a new energy, when the paternalism of a college course is replaced by the comparative independence of a professional student. It was so with Judge Townsend. He gave to his professional education closer attention than he had bestowed on that offered him at college. He worked hard and successfull3\ A study from his pen on the subject of the Roman Advocate as compared with the English Barrister, secured the prize then annually offered for the best essay on the Civil Law, and in the same year the Jewell Prize for the best dissertation by one of the Senior class was also won by him. The graduate course at this School was established in 1875. He was one of the first to enter it and received the degree of Doctor of Civil Law in course, in 1880. While pursuing his graduate studies, he entered my office, and was then first introduced to the actual, every-day practice of the bar. I found him always careful, attentive, industrious, anxious to do his best and to make the most of every — 8— opportunity. He had, to start with, strong common sense ; good powers of discrimination and anal3^sis ; the faculty of clear statement and persuasive argu- ment. His professional training had been unusually thorough, and he was now in a position to make it tell in the conduct of legal business. He soon secured a clientage of his own, but for a number of years we had our offices together and were bound to each other with increasing intimacy. We had a new tie between us in 1881, when he be- came Professor of Pleading in the Law School. From the first he was a successful teacher. He loved the work. His native qualities adapted him to it, and his long course of legal education had given him a broad foundation on which to build. He was a popular teacher in the best sense. The Governing Board would have been glad to have him devote himself entirely to the School, and make teaching his life work ; but he preferred to retain also his active con- nection with the bar. In 1887, when the Edward J. Phelps Professorship of Contracts and Commercial Law was founded, he was appointed to that position, and continued to give instruction on those subjects and in Admiralty for a number of years after he left the bar. As a Judge, the qualities which had given him high rank as a practitioner, and a law teacher, did him equal service. He always gave his heart to his work. His nature was enthusiastic. What he did he did with his whole powers of mind and body. No pains were spared to prepare himself for his work here as a teacher of law, or to fulfill in a larger sphere his work as a minister of justice. — 9— That of the District Judge of the United States in this district is mainly done in the Circuit Court ; and much of it in New York. The work of the Circuit Judges in this circuit is mainly done in the Circuit Court of Appeals, held in that city. Judge Town- send's court work was largely and increasingly there. After his appointment as Circuit Judge it became mainly of the kind belonging to an appellate court. In no circuit of the country is the business of this nature of equal magnitude or greater complexity. It soon absorbed all his energies, and he reluctantly gave up to others the work of instruction here in the subjects which he had taught so long. His last serious contributions to the service of the School (except as a member of the Governing Board in the general direc- rection of its affairs) were made in the preparation of the volume issued by the Faculty of the Department in commemoration of the Bicentennial of Yale in 1901. Of this — a record of "Two Centuries Growth of Amer- ican Law " — he wrote more than a fifth. His chapter on the history of American Patent Law may be espe- cially mentioned as a careful and comprehensive study of the subject, which has had deserved influence in shaping judicial opinion. In every court dealing with patent causes on appeal there is apt to be one of the judges to whom is gener- ally entrusted the preparation of the opinions to be delivered in disposing of them. Justice Blatchford per- formed that office in the Supreme Court of the United States. Judge Townsend came to perform it in this circuit, under the new system introduced in 189 1. It requires some aptitude for mechanics, good powers of discrimination, habits of close and patient study, the faculty of clear expression. iVll these he had and gave iinreservedl}^ to the work. His task as a judicial officer came to be, it would now seem, beyond the strength of his slight frame, animated though it was by an indomitable spirit. And yet, in thus serving public interests he served his own also. There are those, and he was one of them, to whom hard work brings its daily blessing as a ban- isher of sorrow. Melancholy is a foe to be expelled at any cost, and pre-occupation is often the only thing that avails to shut it out. Judge Townsend had his happy days. He had his sad days, too, and he had occasion for them. Only those who knew him best were aware how often his pleasant smile and ga}^ word only marked an endeavor to hide from others a heavy heart. We cannot forget, as he could not forget, how twice, in recent years, the shadow of death fell full across his path. For long also he had felt that he himself might be on the brink of the valley where it lies deepest. I do not think he feared to enter it. It is dying that such men dread, not death. It was his happiness that this came to him, at last, almost unannounced. One day, looking on this beautiful plain and bay of ours from the heights of East Rock Park, — the next, he was at rest, so far as the labors of this world are concerned ; and taking up, it may be, such as the God, in whom he steadfastly believed, may have to give his children in some larger life. President HadlEy : As one for many years closely associated with Judge Townsend, there is none better fitted to speak of him than Thomas Thacher, of New York. REMARKS OF MR. THOMAS THACHER. Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen : A meeting in memory of Judge Townsend must not be — cannot be — one of mourning. We meet not to mourn, but to rejoice over his life — now in a sense ended, but yet still continuing (else we should not be here) ; to feel the force of that life, and of the character which lay behind it, which was developed in it, and which is revealed by it — more than ever before since his death. Out of the memory of college days there come to me, as singularly appropriate to this occasion, these words of Pliny : " Si fas est mortem vocare, qua mor- talitas tanti viri magis finita quam vita est" — " If it is right to call that death by which the mortality of such a man, rather than his life, is ended." Does not death seem to give completeness to such a life ? It puts it beyond the possibility of impairment — makes it im- mortal. Things begun and not yet finished must be passed over to others ; but this is in the natural order of things. This life would not seem so complete as it does, if it were not for these unfinished things, look- ing forward into and preparing for the years to come. Singularly, as it seems to me, death makes this life complete. It is for us, so far as we may, to see to it ■12- that its influence shall not simply live, but grow, while time shall endure. Nothing can be said from this platform which will compare with what is in your minds and hearts. We can say but one thing at a time ; we have to analyze, speaking of this and of that, and trying by separate suggestions to show that life and character. But what we have in mind is the grand total of a man, without measuring how much is intellectual, how much is of the heart, and so on, the union of many elements which made the Billy Townsend whom we knew and loved and who loved us. A few words of suggestion is all we can give. Many years ago, when Judge Townsend was called on to speak at an athletic dinner he began with the words " Fellow Athletes " ; this with a smile, and the smile caught and went all over the room for reasons that are obvious ; and yet do you believe, with the revelation of his life as a whole, that there was a man within the reach of his voice who was more filled with love of honorable struggle, and with eager- ness for victory, in any worthy contest than he was ? Or one who had more of the nerve of will to back whatever of strength of any kind he could find within himself? And if it be the special function of the athlete to take the blows that come with good grace, and be ready quickly and with good cheer for the work which yet is to be done, can you name a man who was entitled, through life, to a higher place as a ''fellow athlete"? Now, I do not like to pick to pieces this flower. I do not like to say what was the secret of Judge Town- send's success, or what were the several elements of the beauty of his character. But somehow or other —13— there are two words that come to me — three words that come to me ; joy, happiness, and love. There never \vas a man who had a bigger power of enjoy- ment of men and things, of work and play, than he. There never was a man, to my knowledge, who had a broader reach of love for his fellow-men. No man had a keener sense of happiness, or a stronger desire to give happiness to others. And he loved his work, whatever it was ; he loved the law as a science and as a task ; difficulty was but a spur to him ; out of the burdens of duty he got pleasure. There are those who would give no praise for deeds which give pleasure to the doer. From such persons, Judge Townsend ^vould be entitled to little praise. When a thing was right to be done, was called for by his sense of duty, by his general love of humanity, or his par- ticular love for particular men, women or children, of whatever race, color or condition, it became a pleasure to him to do it. If the getting of pleasure out of deeds done robs them of merit, Judge Townsend's merit marks would perhaps be few ; but he gave us a noted example of the power of character to make pleasure out of that which at first seems hardship ; to get enjoyment out of doing, no matter how hard the doing seems at first to be. A sense of duty he had, but it never was a severe goad to him, because, when duty was seen he wanted to do it, and took pleasure in it. It is not a unique distinction to have been loved by Judge Townsend ; for many share in that honor. It is no great credit to have loved him for years, for there is a host of those who loved him. But it is a great thing to have felt and to still feel the force of that life of jo}^ and happiness, notwithstanding hard- —14— ship and sorrow, and of that all-embracing love for his fellow-men. And it is a privilege to do what we can to secure that the influence of that life, which death has now made immortal, shall endure. I have not said much, for I do not wish to analyze. The sweetness of the rose gains nothing from botani- cal analysis. I would rather not go on using words. Better is it to listen without restraint to the song without words that is singing in our hearts to-night. REMARKS OF PROFESSOR WATROUS. Ladies and Gentlemen : — To you, whose presence here gives mute testimony to your friendship and love for William K. Townsend, I, who also loved him, would add a few words to those that have been spoken in his memory, and to voice our common sorrow. Before me are men who taught him and men who learned from him; men who were with and against him in the practice of the law ; men who are engaged as he was, in the administration of justice ; men and women who have known or been associated with him, in all of the varied activities of his life. And yet how few are we compared with the host of men and women who have known him, in many parts of the world, and whose hearts ache with sorrow at his death. Though his achievements were many, and well worthy of encomium, it is rather a sense of personal loss which has brought us together, and which will dominate our thoughts to-night. In these few words there must of necessity be much that is personal, but that you must pardon me. I can- not speak of him impersonally, and I do not think you would wish me to. I wish to speak of him as your friend and mine. For seven years we were bound together by the ties of partnership in the practice of our profession, and the friendship there formed continued undiminished throughout his life. The memory of it will be one of my dearest possessions throughout my own. — 16— Our acquaintance began while I was yet in college, some years before he began the work of instruction in this School of Law. When I came to the bar, his personality, his profes- sional enthusiasm and standards of professional duty so appealed to me that of all the members of the bar then in practice, I most wished to be associated with him in the practice of the law. Fortunately for me he acceded to my suggestion, and on May ist, 1885, we began our professional life to- gether under the firm name of Townsend & Watrous, in the old Ivcffingwell Building, which for many years before had been the home of the Yale Law School. The old sign of Button & Watrous still hung out in front of our offices. Neither of us wished to take it down and it stayed there throughout. The memory of the enthusiasm of those first few days together is still vivid. Many a night we sat up till the early morning hours addressing our notices of partnership, as many a night afterward we sat up dis- cussing knotty problems of law, of tactics or of ethics. With this same enthusiasm he plunged into his professional life under these changed conditions. Bvery new case, every new client, gave him a new pleasure. It would have been a revelation to many, who knew him but slightly, if they could have known his capacity for hard and serious work. His light-heartedness, his love for a joke or a good story, his fondness for all honest pleasures, seemed to many inconsistent with an ability to attack and master the profounder problems of professional work. A stranger sometimes looked askance, but for a moment only. This feeling was almost instantly dis- pelled. He inspired his clients with confidence and —17— they became his devoted friends. Whether a case was won or lost, they felt that he had done his utmost. While in the work of the- ofhce he was painstaking and industrious, it was in the court room that he was at his best. In cross-examination he was brilliant, and before a jury his addresses, at once sound and sparkling, won many a verdict. His fund of humor was inexhaustible and the humor itself inimitable. No matter how dry the subject of investigation, or how heated the controversy, he never failed to enliven it by his wit, and often brought enemies together and made them friends. It was an unfailing source of amusement between us, that in the discussion of a legal problem we almost invariably approached it from different sides and with different impressions. When we finished, we were almost invariably together. He had no false pride of opinion, and was as generous in yielding, as he was gracious in accepting a surrender. A fair measure of success attended oiir labors. We learned how to rejoice in victory, and how to submit to defeat. Our practice was varied, and led him into almost every State and Federal Court. Admiralty cases were his chief delight, and of the few cases of that kind in this district, a large share came to him. In the few patent cases which came to him, he was most distrustful of himself, and yet, strangely enough, it was in this class of cases that he did his best work and gained most renown, in his subsequent career upon the Federal bench. It is outside my purpose to name the cases in which he took part. They are to be found in the records of many courts. It is chiefly of the man and of his methods of work that I wish to speak. — 18— Mauy of our most important cases came to him from personal friends, though our connection with many local interests indentified us with the life of this com- niunit}^, and gave us a share in the work of consolida- tion of interests which had been so conspicuous a feature of the last half century. Much of our work was for the New York, New Haven & Hartford Railroad Co. A sincere attach- ment grew up between him and President C. P. Clark, which led Mr. Clark to offer him a high permanent position in the legal department of the company. Mainl}^, I think, through lo3^alty to the firm, he de- clined it. Politics interested him to a high degree, and friends vied with one another to do him political honor, when- ever opportunity came. He was made the first president of the Young Men's Republican Club, after its reorganization in 1885, and throughout its early history his energetic efforts did much to start it upon its career of constantly increas- ing power and healthful influence. In 1889, after much excited campaigning, he was elected Corporation Counsel of the City of New Haven. His work here, as everywhere, was faithful and conscientious, and his record of service has been an example and inspiration to his successors in that office. Throughout the whole period of our partnership he was engaged actively in the work of instruction, as a Professor in this School. In this he was remarkably successful and his personal popularity was unbounded. In those days more than now, students entered offices, as clerks, during their Law School courses, and during these years many of the best men sought the privilege of more intimate association with him, in his office. —19— Many of them have fulfilled the promises of their early years. We thought of them as our boys, and it was a delight to him to follow their professional careers and rejoice in their triumphs. Later it became my privilege to be associated with him as a member of the Faculty, and later still, of the Governing Board. This added one more tie to the many that bound me to him. His interest in the School was very great and his regard for his associates was no less than theirs for him. Such ties, formed in the work of up- building an institution like this, are not lightly severed. Professor Townsend threw himself with zeal into all of these many labors, he could not work with mod- eration but nervously, fitfully, and his health, never rugged, many times gave way, and made rest impera- tive. He put his whole heart into his work, as he did into his friendships. His power of recuperation, how- ever, was remarkable, and he always came back apparently as full of life and vigor as ever. But the constant strain of such intense effort wore upon him, and when in 1892, the appointment to the position of U. S. District Judge came to him, he felt bound, though with much reluctance, to accept it. Before that time, Mr. Edward G. Buckland, who had been with us as clerk and had proved himself invaluable in lightening our labors, had been admitted to the firm. With this judicial appointment, he began a new and distinguished career in the public service. Others have told and will tell of the extent and value of that service. Faculties and capacities — unsuspected even by him- self — soon showed themselves, and his administration of his high office has been a pride and a delight to his friends. His promotion to the position of Circuit Judge fol- lowed, upon Judge Shipman's retirement, and of late years his time has been mainly given to service in the U. S. Circuit Court of Appeals, necessitating his con- stant presence and virtually his residence in the City of New York. But one step higher could be taken, and it is the confident belief of his friends that had his life been spared, even this step he would have taken. Memories crowd in upon me, as I try to tell briefly and simply the outlines of our professional life to- gether. Not one mars the pleasure of those recollec- tions. Never an unkind word nor an unkind thought passed between us. He never shirked an unpleasant duty. He bore his full share of every burden. In later years he often looked back with a longing for the arena, but he realized that the strain and stress were too great for his frail strength. He worked, perhaps, as hard, but under less exacting conditions. His judicial work was very congenial to him and he often spoke with keen pleasure of his close and cordial relationship with his brethren on the bench. While we dwell upon his lovable and admirable characteristics, it does not mean that we deem him faultless. He was too intensely human for that. His was a personality of rare charm. He had a most extraordinary faculty for making and holding friends and was loyal and devoted to them. He was a gentleman — brave and true ! Few men have had a greater measure of happiness in their lives, and few have had more crushing sorrows to bear. -21- But he bore them bravely. The world has been happier and better for tlie life which he led ; he has left us a rich heritage of memo- ries which will help us to bear the pain of parting. REMARKS OF PRESIDENT HADLEY. My first real acquaintance with the work of Judge Townsend came when several of my friends entered the Yale Law School. They were quite carried away by the enthusiasm of his teaching. They praised his clearness, his close establishment of the relation between case and principle, and above all things the concrete way in which he showed them how the law was an active agent in the ordering of human affairs. As his professional work widened and I came to know more of it, the impression of these qualities broadened and deepened. Judge Townsend was one of those men, rather rare in our day, upon whom had descended the spirit of the great English lawyers and judges of the eighteenth century. He had the sort of inspira- tion which made the underlying reasons for his con- clusions clear to the layman as well as to the lawyer. This was partly due to the character of his mind ; it was due still more, I suspect, to his enthusiastic inter- est in the people with whom he came in contact. It was not enough for him to have established a proposi- tion in such a way that they could not refute it. He desired to get the thing into such shape that their minds could work on it as his mind worked on it. The principle that good law was good common sense was to him not a mere aphorism. It was the outcome of a social instinct which demanded that he and his friends should be able to look at legal principles in the same light — or at any rate just as far as their intelligence and their information would permit. —23— As I came to know Judge Townsend better and bet- ter, the sense of this community of feeling, of the strength of this underlying sentiment, of the man working among men, came more and more into the foreground. And with it came also, very gradually, a knowledge of the dilhculties and burdens under which he worked. For his strong instinct of friend- ship did not serve merely as a means of professional inspiration ; it was a means of facing courageously days that were full of both good and ill, and resolutely choosing the good. Five years ago he sent me those wonderful lines of Ironquill on whist ; quoting them from memory, with a characteristic change of his own that he had uncon- sciously introduced, and which I give in repeating them. " Hour after hour the cards were fairly shuffled Aud fairly dealt ; yet still I got no hand. I rose from play, and with a mind unruffled I only said, 'I do not understand.' " Life is a game of whist. From unseen sources The cards are shuffled aud the hands are dealt. Blind are our efforts to control the forces Which, though unseen, are no less strongly felt. "I do not like the way the cards are shuffled ; But yet I'm in the game, and bound to stay ; And through the long, long night will I, unruffled, Play what I get until the break of day." More and more, as the years went on, I felt that these words were made good in his life. I have seen some men who under the pressure of misfortune or infirmity could give up the fight and smile the smile of resig- nation. I have seen some who could set their teeth and fight on grimly till the end came. William Kneeland Townsend was the only man I ever saw —24— who had the courage to keep up the fight against overwhelming odds and to bear the smile on his face at the same time. He stayed in the game to the end. Good hands or bad hands, he played them for all thc}^ were worth. The break of day found him, with strength reduced to a shadow and with endurance stretched to the breaking point, but with mind unruf- fled, with nerve unshaken, with courage unconquered and unconquerable. ,r^' or thC of y