CLAVIJO Y FAJARDO, JOSÉ (1730–1806), Spanish publicist, was born at Lanzarote (Canary Islands) in 1730. He settled in Madrid, became editor of El Pensador, and by his campaign against the public performance of autos sacramentales secured their prohibition in 1765. In 1770 he was appointed director of the royal theatres, a post which he resigned in order to take up the editorship of the Mercurio histórico y politico de Madrid: at the time of his death in 1806 he was secretary to the Cabinet of Natural History. He had in abundance the courage, perseverance and gift of pungent expression which form the equipment of the aggressive journalist, but his work would long since have been forgotten were it not that it put an end to a peculiarly national form of dramatic exposition, and that his love affair with one of Beaumarchais’ sisters suggested the theme of Goethe’s first publication, Clavigo.
CLAY, CASSIUS MARCELLUS (1810–1903), American politician,
was born in Madison county, Kentucky, on the 19th of
October 1810. He was the son of Green Clay (1757–1826), a
Kentucky soldier of the war of 1812 and a relative of Henry
Clay. He was educated at Centre College, Danville, Kentucky,
and at Yale, where he graduated in 1832. Influenced to some
extent by William Lloyd Garrison, he became an advocate of the
abolition of slavery, and on his return to his native state, at the
risk of social and political ostracism, he gave utterance to his
belief. He studied law, but instead of practising devoted
himself to a political career. In 1835, 1837 and 1840 he was
elected as a Whig to the Kentucky legislature, where he advocated
a system of gradual emancipation, and secured the establishment
of a public school system, and a much-needed reform in the jury
system. In 1841 he was defeated on account of his abolition
views. In 1844 he delivered campaign speeches for Henry Clay
throughout the North. In 1845 he established, at Lexington,
Kentucky, an anti-slavery publication known as The True American, but in the same year his office and press were wrecked
by a mob, and he removed the publication office to Cincinnati,
Ohio. During this and the earlier period of his career his zeal and
hot temper involved him in numerous personal encounters and
several duels, in all of which he bore himself with a reckless
bravery. In the Mexican War he served as a captain of a
Kentucky company of militia, and was taken prisoner, while
reconnoitring, during General Scott’s advance on the City of
Mexico. He left the Whig party in 1850, and as an anti-slavery
candidate for governor of Kentucky polled 5000 votes. In 1856
he joined the Republican party, and wielded considerable
influence as a Southern representative in its councils. In 1860
he was a leading candidate for the vice-presidential nomination.
In 1861 he was sent by President Lincoln as minister to Russia;
in 1862 he returned to America to accept a commission as major-general
of volunteers, but in March 1863 was reappointed to his
former post at St Petersburg, where he remained until 1869.
Disapproving of the Republican policy of reconstruction, he left
the party, and in 1872 was one of the organizers of the Liberal-Republican
revolt, and was largely instrumental in securing the
nomination of Horace Greeley for the presidency. In the
political campaigns of 1876 and 1880 he supported the Democratic
candidate, but rejoined the Republican party in the campaign of
1884. He died at Whitehall, Kentucky, on the 22nd of July
1903.
See his autobiography, The Life, Memoirs, Writings, and Speeches of Cassius Marcellus Clay (Cincinnati, 1896); and The Writings of Cassius Marcellus Clay (edited with a “Memoir” by Horace Greeley. New York, 1848).
CLAY, CHARLES (1801–1893), English surgeon, was born at
Bredbury, near Stockport, on the 27th of December 1801. He
began his medical education as a pupil of Kinder Wood in
Manchester (where he used to attend John Dalton’s lectures on
chemistry), and in 1821 went to Edinburgh to continue his
studies there. Qualifying in 1823, he began a general practice in
Ashton-under-Lyne, but in 1839 removed to Manchester to
practise as an operative and consulting surgeon. It was there
that, in 1842, he first performed the operation of ovariotomy
with which his name is associated. On this occasion it was
perfectly successful, and when in 1865 he published an analysis
of 111 cases he was able to show a mortality only slightly above
30%. Although his merits in this matter have sometimes been
denied, his claim to the title “Father of Ovariotomy” is now
generally conceded, and it is admittted that he deserves the
credit not only of having shown how that operation could be
made a success, but also of having played an important part in
the advance of abdominal surgery for which the 19th century was
conspicuous. In spite of the claims of a heavy practice, Clay
found time for the pursuit of geology and archaeology. Among
the books of which he was the author were a volume of Geological Sketches of Manchester (1839) and a History of the Currency of the Isle of Man (1849), and his collections included over a thousand
editions of the Old and New Testaments and a remarkably
complete series of the silver and copper coins of the United
States. He died at Poulton-le-Fylde, near Preston, on the 19th
of September 1893.
CLAY, FREDERIC (1838–1889), English musical composer, the son of James Clay, M.P., who was celebrated as a player of
whist and a writer on that subject, was born in Paris on the 3rd of
August 1838. He studied music under W. B. Molique in Paris
and Moritz Hauptmann at Leipzig. With the exception of a few
songs and two cantatas, The Knights of the Cross (1866) and
Lalla Rookh (1877),—the latter of which contained his well-known
song “I’ll sing thee songs of Araby,”—his compositions
were all written for the stage. Clay’s first public appearance was
made with an opera entitled Court and Cottage, the libretto of
which was written by Tom Taylor. This was produced at
Covent Garden in 1862, and was followed by Constance (1865),
Ages Ago (1869), and Princess Toto (1875), to name only three of
many works which have long since been forgotten. The last two,
which were written to libretti by W. S. Gilbert, are among Clay’s
most tuneful and most attractive works. He wrote part of the
music for Babil and Bijou (1872) and The Black Crook (1873),
both of which were produced at the Alhambra. He also furnished
incidental music for a revival of Twelfth Night and for the
production of James Albery’s Oriana. His last works, The Merry Duchess (1883) and The Golden Ring (1883), the latter
written for the reopening of the Alhambra, which had been burned
to the ground the year before, showed an advance upon his
previous work, and rendered all the more regrettable the stroke of
paralysis which crippled his physical and mental energies during
the last few years of his life. He died at Great Marlow on the 24th of November 1889.
CLAY, HENRY (1777–1852), American statesman and orator,
was born in Hanover county, Virginia, on the 12th of April 1777,
and died in Washington on the 29th of June 1852. Few public
characters in the United States have been the subject of more
heated controversy. His enemies denounced him as a pretender,
a selfish intriguer, and an abandoned profligate; his supporters
placed him among the sages and sometimes even among the
saints. He was an arranger of measures and leader of political
forces, not an originator of ideas and systems. His public life
covered nearly half a century, and his name and fame rest
entirely upon his own merits. He achieved his success despite
serious obstacles. He was tall, rawboned and awkward; his
early instruction was scant; but he “read books,” talked well,
and so, after his admission to the bar at Richmond, Virginia,
in 1797, and his removal next year to Lexington, Kentucky, he
quickly acquired a reputation and a lucrative income from his
law practice.
Thereafter, until the end of life, and in a field where he met, as either friend or foe, John Quincy Adams, Gallatin, Madison, Monroe, Webster, Jackson, Calhoun, Randolph and Benton, his political activity was wellnigh ceaseless. At the age of twenty-two (1799), he was elected to a constitutional convention in Kentucky; at twenty-six, to the Kentucky legislature; at twenty-nine, while yet under the age limit of the United States constitution, he was appointed to an unexpired term (1806–1807) in the United States Senate, where, contrary to custom, he at once plunged into business, as though he had been there all his life. He again served in the Kentucky legislature
