by Ron Chernow
Despite the small snubs, the trip to Windsor Castle strengthened the budding Anglo-Saxon alliance. Two days later, Grant expressed pleasure at “the good feeling and good sentiment which now exist between the two peoples who of all others should be good friends. We are of one kindred, of one blood, of one language, and of one civilization, though in some respects we believe that we, being younger, surpass the mother country.”37 The visit was minutely chronicled by the American press, and Union soldiers believed that tributes lavished upon Grant were paid in absentia to them as well. Perhaps because of his English ancestry, Grant maintained that his visit there was arguably the most enjoyable segment of his global tour. “Next to my own country, there is none I love so much as England.”38
Grant’s fondness may have been enhanced by his daughter’s temporarily happy marriage to Algernon Sartoris. Three months earlier, Nellie had given birth to a son and the Grants visited her at the Sartoris estate in Southampton for several days, gadding about the countryside. The marriage as yet offered no signs of the coming disaster and the Grants felt relieved as they left their daughter. “Nellie appeared very happy in her beautiful country home,” wrote Jesse, “and we returned to London greatly cheered by her content.”39
In July, Grant crossed the English Channel, met King Leopold II in Belgium and Richard Wagner in Heidelberg (Julia remained fuzzy as to whether it was Wagner or Franz Liszt), and drank in the sublimity of the Swiss Alps. While ensconced at Lago Maggiore in northern Italy, Grant announced, “There is one Italian whose hand I wish especially to shake, and that man is General Garibaldi.”40 Everywhere Grant drew enormous crowds, but his elaborate tour rested on a tenuous financial base and he fretted continually about money. Writing to Buck from London in late August, he inquired about his shares in Consolidated Virginia Mining Company, a silver producer: “The length of my stay abroad will have to depend in some degree upon the length of time it continues to pay dividends, or the price at which my stock in it sells.”41 Grant’s mind drifted to political events at home and he stoutly opposed the huge strike by Baltimore & Ohio Railroad workers who objected to pay cuts. As the stoppage migrated to other railroads, he told Abel Corbin, “My judgment is that it should have been put down with a strong hand and so summarily as to prevent a like occurrence for a generation.”42
Grant’s harsh stance stood in sharp contrast to the enraptured reception he received from British labor. Upon arriving in Newcastle in late September, he encountered crowds dwarfing anything he had ever seen. As the mayor greeted him at the train station, thousands of eager people milled about outside, avid to catch a look at him. As ceremonial guns fired salutes, foghorns blared, and church bells chimed, Grant boarded a steamer on the River Tyne and gaped in disbelief at the immense crowds lining the docks—a throng estimated at 150,000 people, mostly workmen who had poured from mines and factories to see him. Grant handled this unforeseen adulation with perfect aplomb, never losing his composure.
On September 22, as he mounted a platform on the town moor, the assembled laborers cheered so lustily that their roar could be heard a mile away. He delivered a speech that breathed a fine spirit of solidarity, confirming that Grant had never forgotten his simple midwestern roots: “We all know that but for labor we would have very little that is worth fighting for, and when wars do come, they fall upon the many, the producing class, who are the sufferers. They not only have to furnish the means largely, but they have, by their labor and industry, to produce the means for those who are engaged in destroying and not in producing.”43 The speech touched a profound chord and one reporter spotted a black man, his face awash with tears, “devouring Grant with a gaze of such fervid admiration and respect and gratitude that it flashes out the secret of the great liberator’s popularity.”44 While Grant was celebrated as a victorious wartime general and the president who had peacefully settled the Alabama claims, most gratifying to him was being honored as the protector of freed people. A delegation of painters marched by, hoisting a picture that depicted the shackles of slavery being struck off beside the words “Welcome to the Liberator.”45
—
ON OCTOBER 24, 1877, Ulysses S. Grant arrived in a rain-swept Paris and checked into the Hotel Bristol for five weeks. Elihu Washburne had briefed him on the frenzied politics of the Third Republic with its bitter strife between Republicans and monarchists: “No man not present can have an idea of the violence, the madness and the ruffianism of the opposition to the Republicans.”46 Recent elections had brought a republican victory but also fed rumors of a right-wing military coup. “Paris never looked more beautiful, more self-composed, but never was more anxious,” said John Russell Young.47 The situation reminded Grant of the irreconcilable split between American Unionists and secessionists. Upon arrival he paid a courtesy call at the Élysée Palace, meeting with President Patrice de MacMahon, a former field marshal in the French army, who told Grant his people preferred a monarchy. The two men developed a warm rapport, strolling arm in arm down the Champs-Élysées, but Grant believed the French were Republicans at heart and would never settle for a royal regime. Misreading his American visitor, MacMahon cordially invited Grant to review military facilities across the country and was taken aback that the famous warrior evinced no nostalgia for combat.
In contrast to his British Isles tour, Grant was received coldly by Victor Hugo and other militant Parisians who believed he had tilted toward Prussia during the Franco-Prussian War, a view strengthened by the heroic actions of Washburne who, as American minister, had rescued Germans stranded in Paris during the conflict. The French view had more than a grain of truth: Grant had detested Napoleon III and the entire Bonaparte family, affecting his view of the conflict. “The third Napoleon was worse than the first, the especial enemy of America and liberty,” Grant later said. “Think of the misery he brought upon France by a war which . . . no one but a madman would have declared.”48 The man who most impressed him was the Republican leader Léon Gambetta, interior minister during the Franco-Prussian War, who had escaped from Paris by balloon. Grant saw Gambetta as a spotless patriot and one of the premier European statesmen, occupying the same rarefied realm as Gladstone.
Grant’s aversion to Napoleon kept cropping up during his Parisian stay. Young tried to steer him to Les Invalides to see Napoleon’s tomb and nearly succeeded before Grant swerved away and kept on walking. “I never admired the character of the first Napoleon; but I recognize his great genius,” Grant wrote.49 In part his revulsion arose from his hatred of any romanticizing of warfare. “I never saw a war picture that was pleasant,” he remarked. “I tried to enjoy some of those in Versailles, but they were disgusting.”50 Grant’s dislike of Napoleon didn’t extend to Julia, who fell prey to unabashed hero worship at his tomb: “I never read of his gallant deeds but it thrilled my girl’s heart.” As she approached the tomb, she was seized with a “violent shivering” of pure awe. “There lay Napoleon, not twenty steps from me in that great black sarcophagus.”51
The chilly political atmosphere encouraged Grant to sample the everyday delights of Paris and eavesdrop on ordinary people. When he visited Versailles, he deliberately took a third-class train to mingle with the working people. He loved to study idlers on the Champs-Élysées or watch a Punch-and-Judy show in the park. He stopped by the studio of Frédéric Bartholdi and watched him sculpt the Statue of Liberty. Sometimes he visited the local bureau of the New York Herald to scan the newspapers and didn’t seem bothered by press attacks against him.
Julia Grant recorded one Parisian incident that offers a revealing perspective on Grant’s famous habit of never turning back, instead always plunging ahead. She had grown enamored of a jeweled butterfly she spotted in the Tiffany store, but before she made up her mind to buy it, Grant glanced at his watch. “My time is up,” he stated. “I have an engagement and must go now.”52 As they descended the stairs, Julia belatedly realized how cheap the broach was and decided to go back and buy it. “The Gen
eral refused to turn back, said he was superstitious about turning back, and reminded me that I was about to make a purchase on Saturday, which he knew I was always superstitious about.”53 Although refusing to retrace his steps, Grant agreed to buy her the butterfly for Christmas. The Grants’ belief in dreams and superstition, so evident in their early letters, never entirely deserted them. However much Grant enjoyed his Parisian rambles and glimpses of quotidian life, he was mystified about the charms American expatriates found there. “I have walked over the city so thoroughly that the streets are quite familiar to me,” he told Buck, his provincial roots showing. “The city is beautiful, but I do not see the inducements for so many Americans remaining here year after year who are not engaged in business. I certainly should prefer any of our large cities as a residence.”54
In December, Grant’s trip entered a new phase when the U.S. government allowed him to use the Vandalia, a man-of-war cruising in the Mediterranean, giving him his own private warship as he steamed to Italy, Egypt, and the Holy Land. That Grant traveled aboard a government vessel disclosed the growing political importance of his trip: he was traveling as the representative of his country, an emerging power in the world. As diplomatic expert Edwina Campbell has written of this novel venture, “Grant was his country’s ambassador at large, the first practitioner of postpresidential diplomacy.”55 The accommodations were rougher than on a transatlantic liner, but Grant delighted in them, as if launched on a boyish lark. “The lines of worry were gone from his face,” recalled Jesse, “and he looked younger than I could remember him. For the first time in his life he was free from worry and care.”56 Young noticed how the Mediterranean sun had bronzed Grant’s face, erasing the “tired, weary, anxious look” of his second term as president.57 Albert G. Caldwell, who commanded the Vandalia, detected Grant’s split personality—the silent mask he donned for others, his conviviality among family and friends. He “looks grim & does not talk when strangers are about but is quite chatty with us on board . . . bright & witty when he wants to be but diffident as a young girl in company & silent as a post before the world.”58 Caldwell estimated that Julia and Grant both weighed about 180 pounds; that she was “very cross eyed: always kind & pleasant”; and that Grant and Jesse treated her with sweet solicitude.59
Grant had plenty of time to read, perusing The Innocents Abroad by Mark Twain and reading aloud excerpts from Homer’s Odyssey to Julia. Pompeii’s ruins charged his imagination, although he prudishly refused to tour the ancient brothel that had beguiled so many sightseers. Egypt’s khedive, Ismail the Magnificent, gave Grant the run of a palace and a vessel to transport him up the Nile. Whether clad in Turkish fez or pith helmet wrapped in silk, Grant showed inexhaustible energy and curiosity as he toured ancient tombs and temples. He rode on a camel, which he found tougher than weathering heavy seas. He was transfixed by the Sphinx, whose silence surpassed his own. “It looks as if it has kept on thinking through all eternity without talking too much,” he noted with approval.60 Grant bounded healthily from place to place, but the stout Julia proved less nimble. As Grant informed Fred, “Your Ma balances on a donkey very well when she has an Arab on each side to hold her, and one to lead the donkey.”61 Not blind to the hardships of Egyptian life or the filthy condition of Alexandria’s poor, he still rhapsodized his weeks on the Nile “as among the happiest in my life.”62
In February 1878, Grant braved rain, wind, and snow to become the first American president to visit Jerusalem. He met with a delegation of American Jews who distributed relief to their suffering brethren in the Holy Land and he promised to carry their message to Jewish leaders at home. As they entered religious sites, Julia was susceptible to powerful emotions, her active imagination a perfect foil for her husband’s skeptical, deadpan humor. After entering a beautiful chapel, Julia set eyes on an intriguing sign: “Anyone who will say a prayer for the soul of Pope Pius IX will receive absolution.” At once she fell to her knees and heard her husband quip, “You see, Young, Mrs. Grant is taking all the chances”—that is, taking no chances in the afterlife.63
By early March, the Grants reached Constantinople, went ashore, and viewed the sultan’s stable of pure-blooded Arabian stallions, magnificent creatures that “pick up their feet like a cat & so quickly that one can scarcely follow their motions,” said Caldwell.64 Grant was instantly entranced by the animals, and, when the sultan pressed him to take home a pair, he selected two dappled grays that were shipped to New York. He was startled to discover how thoroughly Ottoman officers had studied his military campaigns. When the Vandalia anchored off Athens, the king of Greece came on board to while away an afternoon with Grant and sought his advice on relations with Turkey—another sign that Grant was far more than just a private citizen flitting about on vacation. In a special tribute, the Greeks illuminated the Parthenon in his honor. After Greece, when Grant left the Vandalia, Caldwell was saddened to see him go, saying he was “chock full of information . . . Grant knows what it costs to make a yard of cotton south or in Providence—the bushels of grain exported for years—the fluctuations of exchange—the Army & Navy ration to an ounce & all such information & he is never wrong about a figure or a date.”65
Grant’s eventful tour had many wonders in the offing. The morning he arrived in Rome, an emissary from Pope Leo XIII tracked him down and invited him to a private audience at 2 p.m. King Umberto I had sought the honor of greeting him first, so Grant agreed, with diplomatic finesse, that he and Jesse would stop by the palace en route to the Vatican and pay their respects to the monarch. Grant wasn’t fazed that a king and a pope vied for his company. “We’re simply tourists, Jesse,” he said. “We’ll have an early lunch and then we’ll go.”66 With Jesse guiding them with a map, father and son set out for the palace only to barge in at the wrong gate. After they located the right courtyard, they chatted with the king and queen for nearly an hour. At the Vatican, they were joined by Julia, and Grant found Pope Leo XIII impressively robed in white. The new pontiff blessed Julia’s little diamond cross and chatted with Ulysses in French as Jesse translated. Well-briefed on American affairs, the pope regretted that Grant’s Des Moines speech on separating church and state had prevented Roman Catholic instruction in public schools, but he admired the impartial way Grant had applied his policy across all religious denominations.
Although Grant absorbed Rome’s beauties, taking in the Colosseum and the Arches of Titus and Constantine, his taste in art was impoverished. In the Vatican, he whizzed past famous marble statuary, as if traversing barren territory on a rapid military march. Adam Badeau stood amused and appalled by Grant’s indifference to artistic treasures: “He got tired of the Sistine Chapel, and poked fun at me when I wanted to look once more at the Last Judgment of Michael Angelo. He would not pretend. He was blind always to the beauties of art. I don’t think he could ever tell a good picture from a bad one.”67 In Venice, Grant let slip a remark that would provide fodder for many satirists: he told a young woman what a fine city it would be if only the canals were drained. Henry Adams adduced this as damning evidence of Grant’s philistine nature, but he may only have meant that the canals should be cleansed of sewage.
Returning to Paris in May in time to browse the Universal Exposition, Grant thought that it didn’t measure up to the Centennial Exhibition he had presided over as president. When he and Julia stepped on a newfangled scale at the fair, he registered 165 pounds and she weighed 10 pounds more. The couple now swapped children on the trip, sending Jesse home to attend Columbia Law School, while welcoming Fred to the party. “I had enough of it,” an exasperated Jesse confessed to reporters on the New York dock. “I got tired of those foreign countries.”68 For the first time in a year, Grant admitted to being homesick and Julia had wearied of this vagabond life. Still, the indefatigable Grant had a lengthy list of places he wanted to see. There was also the bizarre circumstance that he possessed no true American home, making him feel like a stateless, latter-day Flying Dutchman. He a
lso knew that certain friends would shanghai him back into politics as soon as he returned home. For this reason, he decided to extend the trip until the following year. His silver mining dividends sustained the voyage, and he added two thousand shares of Yellow Jacket Silver Mining Company, whose terrain formed part of the Comstock Lode. With his future so uncertain, Grant pondered how he would support himself upon his return. In declining an offer in late May to become president of the Atlantic and Great Western Railroad, a firm associated with Jay Gould, he specified that, should the offer be renewed when he got home, he would certainly reconsider it.
Perhaps Grant’s most stimulating European encounter came with Otto von Bismarck. Upon arriving in Berlin, Grant boarded an ordinary streetcar and rode around the town, enjoying unfettered views of the working population. Back in his hotel, he discovered that Prince Bismarck had sent his card over four times to arrange a meeting. “I do not want Bismarck running after me,” Grant told Young; “he has a great deal of business to do, while I am simply a wanderer.” He made himself available to Bismarck at any hour.69 He ended up seeing him at four the next afternoon, showing up at his palace on foot—the liveried servants, aghast, had expected him to pull up in a stately coach—and after throwing away his cigar butt, he ascended a marble staircase.
With snow-white hair and a massive forehead, Bismarck, in military uniform, welcomed Grant with both hands extended. Turning on the charm, he expressed surprise that Grant was only seven years his junior. “That shows the value of a military life,” he remarked, “for here you have the frame of a young man, while I feel like an old one.”70 Grant was entranced by the flow of wit that emanated from the worldly Bismarck with his imposing physique, beautiful manners, ready laugh, and penetrating insights. As they sat in his study, smoking cigars, with the window thrown open to a gorgeous park, the conversation turned to the varied exercises in nation building in which both men had so strenuously engaged.