Mrs. Grant and Madame Jule

by Jennifer Chiaverini

  “I don’t want to.” Jule burrowed her chin into her scarf to ward off the bitter winds gusting down the avenue. “But lately Mrs. Grant’s been coming to the capital too often and too unpredictably. Last time I was twenty minutes late for an appointment at the Willard because she was holding court in the ladies’ parlor and I couldn’t sneak past the doorway.”

  Emma risked a skeptical glance. “She probably would’ve been too preoccupied with her callers to notice if you’d hurried by with your bonnet up.”

  “Maybe, but I couldn’t risk it.”

  Emma halted, bringing Jule to a stop beside her. “Why are you still so afraid to meet her? Surely you don’t fear you’ll be thrown back into slavery.”

  “No, not anymore.” Jule resumed walking, bringing Emma along with her. Ratified or not, the Thirteenth Amendment had put those fears to rest. “I can’t rightly explain it. When I think of her, I feel so much—so much anger and resentment, I’m afraid what I might do or say. We were close once, or at least, as close as slave and mistress can be. For most of my life, I trusted her to look out for me, and to set me free if she could.” Jule inhaled deeply, outrage and disappointment simmering. “She married an abolitionist and still kept me enslaved. President Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, and still she didn’t set me free. I know she thinks I betrayed her by running away, but she betrayed me.”

  “All the more reason for you to hold your ground, to stay in Washington, where you’ve made your new home,” Emma declared. “If you do happen to run into her, well, simply tell her what you just told me. You’ll probably feel much better afterward.”

  “She might not be my mistress anymore, but she’s still the wife of a very powerful man.” Jule shook her head. “No, even now I can’t risk offending her.”

  “Don’t let her chase you off,” Emma implored. “When the war’s over, she’ll likely go back to Missouri, too far away to trouble you anymore.”

  “Maybe. I expect it depends where General Grant’s posted. Oh, Emma, I don’t want to go. I don’t want to start over among strangers again. I don’t want to put a single mile more between me and Gabriel.”

  “Then don’t go,” Emma urged. “At least not before the inauguration. It’s not far off, and you’ll profit greatly from it. We both will.”

  Jule’s appointment book was already filled with the names of ladies determined to look their best for Mr. Lincoln’s swearing-in ceremony and the grand ball the following evening. Her blemish remedies and hair tonics sold almost as quickly as she could fill the bottles. It would be very foolish indeed to scurry away before the most important—and lucrative—events of the social season.

  “I’ll stay,” she told Emma, “at least through the inauguration.”

  She would let the course of the war determine what she did after that.

  In the days that followed, Jule felt her spirits rising with the joyful, exuberant mood that swept through Washington as the capital prepared for Mr. Lincoln’s second inauguration. Thousands of visitors flooded the city, packing hotels and boardinghouses full to overflowing and spilling out onto the streets, where hardier folk set up makeshift camps on sidewalks and in parks. At the Willard, ladies and gentlemen alike sat up all night in crowded parlors because no more beds could be found for them. Every one of Jule’s most loyal clients demanded a place on her card, and visitors begged to be squeezed in at the oddest of hours.

  On the night before the inauguration, Jule was yanked from sleep by the crash of thunder and the scour of hail upon the roof. Groggy, heart pounding, she sat up in bed and drew her quilt around her, for a moment believing herself back at Holly Springs or Vicksburg, confusing the tempest for the roar of artillery. When she realized it was a storm and not an attack, and that she was safe within four strong walls beneath a solid roof, she lay back down and waited for the storm to subside so she might drift back to sleep.

  She woke before dawn to a gray and drizzly morning, and a glance out the window revealed that the night’s torrential downpour had turned the streets into thick rivers of mud. Hoping that the skies would clear before the grand parade, she rose from bed, quickly washed and dressed, put on her older pair of shoes—such a luxury, to own two pairs of sturdy shoes!—and went downstairs for a quick bite of breakfast before hurrying off to her first appointment of the day. She had numerous clients to make beautiful for the president’s inauguration and the White House reception that would follow, the wives of senators and generals and visiting dignitaries. Emma, too, would be very busy, Jule knew, finishing up elegant gowns for Mrs. Keckley’s wealthy clientele, but they planned to meet later to watch the parade and to hear Mr. Lincoln deliver his inaugural address from the Capitol.

  Jule made her way carefully through the mud from her boardinghouse to the Willard, where she dressed the hair of a governor’s wife and their two graceful daughters. All three were so pleased with their tresses that the mother indulged the young ladies’ desire for not one but three bottles of Jule’s hair tonics, one concoction for the eldest’s curly hair, another for her younger sister’s fine, straight locks, and a third to brighten the fading gold of their mother’s.

  “How will we tell which is which?” asked the youngest girl, examining the bottles curiously as Jule set them on the table.

  “You’re holding yours,” said Jule, smiling. “The darkest one is your sister’s, and the lightest is your mother’s.”

  The elder sister held her mother’s bottle and her own up to the light. “They’re so close in hue, I’m afraid I’ll mistake mother’s for mine.”

  “It won’t harm your hair if you do,” Jule assured her.

  “Perhaps not,” the governor’s wife said, “but you really ought to label your products.”

  “Yes, you should,” exclaimed the youngest girl. “And use pretty labels, with flowers and a picture of a lady with gloriously beautiful hair.”

  “You must have an impressive name for each of your concoctions as well,” her elder sister chimed in. “Like Doctor Mountebank’s Arsenical Lotion or Duchess Mary’s Jasmine Cold Cream.”

  Jule smiled and shook her head. “I’m not a doctor or a duchess,” she said, packing her brushes and ribbons in her bag.

  “You don’t have to be,” said the governor’s wife, waving a hand dismissively. “I’ve heard that Duchess Mary is really a perfumer’s daughter from Edinburgh. You must use an interesting name, even if it’s simply ‘Jule of Washington, Hairdresser.’ A clever name would help people remember your tonics—and you.”

  “Maybe so,” said Jule as she accepted her fee, discreetly tucked within a sheet of paper, folded and sealed. “I thank you for the suggestion.”

  After attending to a few more clients, Jule hurried through the crowded streets to meet Emma at her boardinghouse on Twelfth Street. From there, accompanied by several other young ladies who sewed in Mrs. Keckley’s workshop, they joined the tens of thousands of other eager spectators lining the parade route along Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House to the Capitol. Thankfully, the rain had let up, and the procession was as glorious a spectacle as Jule had ever seen, despite the mud underfoot and the cloudy skies above. Graceful horses pranced, soldiers marched proudly, and bands played merry tunes for the ladies, gentlemen, and children who packed the sidewalks, peered out from upper windows, or looked down from rooftops, cheering and waving hats and flags and handkerchiefs.

  A team of sturdy horses pulled a model of an ironclad gunboat, complete with a revolving turret that startled and delighted onlookers by firing blanks as it made its way down Pennsylvania Avenue. Uniformed officers of fire departments from Washington and Philadelphia and fraternal lodges from across the North marched proudly, carrying banners and flags. A local printers’ society had mounted a handpress on a wagon, printing broadsides and distributing them to spectators they passed along the way. Jule was gratified to see people of color marching in the parade
too, a battalion of colored soldiers as well as distinguished leaders of several Negro civic associations.

  “This is the first time people of our race have been included in an inauguration,” Emma told her. “I mean truly included, part of the celebration and ceremony, not just onlookers or the folks who cook the food and clean up afterward.”

  For the first time too, people of color would be permitted on the Capitol grounds while the president delivered his address. As soon as the parade passed by, Jule, Emma, and their companions quickly hurried down side streets, avoiding the worst of the congestion as they made their way to Capitol Hill. A massive crowd thousands strong already filled the muddy grounds when they arrived, but they managed to find a place to stand within the fences.

  When the president emerged onto the East Portico surrounded by dignitaries, a sheet of paper in his hand, the newly completed Capitol dome rising in magnificent splendor high above, the vast crowd surrounding Jule let out a great roar of welcome and gladness. As Mr. Lincoln came forward to the edge of the platform, the clouds suddenly parted and the sun broke through, and a bright shaft of sunlight shone down upon him like a benediction from heaven.

  Jule stood listening, spellbound, as President Lincoln offered his brief, simple, and profoundly beautiful address, clear and poignant and warm, full of forgiveness and reconciliation. He spoke of the war, and how slavery was the undeniable cause of it, and how four years earlier everyone, North and South alike, had wanted to avoid war, but one side would make war rather than let the nation survive, and the other would accept war rather than let it perish. He spoke of their shared belief in one Almighty God, and how peculiar it was that each side prayed to him and invoked his aid against the other. “It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God’s assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men’s faces,” he noted, his high, thin voice carrying to the far edges of the crowd, “but let us judge not that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered; that of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes.”

  Jule felt Emma’s gloved hand close around hers, and she knew the same fervent inspiration filled both their hearts.

  It was possible that God had sent them the terrible war as punishment for the offense of slavery, President Lincoln continued, and that the war could be a mighty scourge to rid them of it. People north and south alike hoped, and fervently prayed, that the war would swiftly pass away, but if God willed that it should continue “until all the wealth piled by the bond-man’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash, shall be paid by another drawn with the sword,” they must accept that the Lord’s judgment was true and righteous.

  “With malice toward none,” Mr. Lincoln urged his listeners, “with charity for all, with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation’s wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just, and a lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations.”

  Breathless, her heart pounding with fervent admiration, Jule watched as Mr. Lincoln turned to a tall, imposing, black-robed gentleman, who stepped forward holding an open Bible. The gentleman—the chief justice of the Supreme Court, Jule heard someone murmur—set the holy book on a stand, and after Mr. Lincoln placed his right hand upon it, the chief justice solemnly administered the oath of office. Then the president bent and kissed the Bible, and as the multitudes roared their approval, an artillery salute boomed and the Marine Band played a stirring tune—but Jule stood motionless and silent, President Lincoln’s powerful oration reverberating in her ears and heart and thoughts.

  “This is history, Jule,” Emma said close to her ear, applauding furiously, her eyes shining with unshed tears of joy. “We were here. We saw it happen. How could you wish to live anywhere else?”

  She couldn’t, Jule realized as she joined in the thunderous applause and ardent cheers of the thousands of citizens, white and colored alike, all around her. Washington City was her home, and she would not let fear and worry drive her from it.

  • • •

  When Julia read of Mr. Lincoln’s stirring inaugural address, she wished anew that Ulys had accepted his invitation to attend the ceremony and the lavish ball that had followed, but soon sad news from Covington drove all regrets for celebrations missed from her thoughts. Only a few days after the president’s second term began, Jesse Root Grant sent Ulys a black-edged letter bearing the stunning news that on March 6, Ulys’s eldest sister, Clara, had died of consumption.

  “I’ve known she was on the decline,” Ulys admitted to Julia, his voice rough, his head bowed over the pages. “But I still hoped she’d rally. I wasn’t expecting to hear of her death so soon.”

  So intense was his sorrow that he could not bring himself to respond to his father’s letter for more than a week, and after that, he buried his grief beneath his stoic exterior. It pained Julia that with so many lives depending upon him, Ulys could not take time to mourn his own loss.

  Sharing his heartache, longing to ease his sorrow, Julia arranged for Jesse to withdraw from school and join them at City Point. Ulys was very glad to have his little rascal with him again, and Jesse’s merry antics around headquarters amused Ulys’s staff officers too. Soon Julia was relieved to see the lines of grief and worry fade from her husband’s brow, although his cares were too great for them to disappear entirely.

  By the middle of March, spring had come to City Point, and preparations for the great offensive against General Lee’s army picked up speed and intensity until the encampment seemed to tremble and hum with eager anticipation. Ulys’s chief of intelligence had received a letter from “a lady in Richmond”—the leader of his intelligence network in the rebel capital—disclosing that Confederate troops had been ordered from the city down the Danville road. Warehouses of tobacco, cotton, and other goods had been turned over to the provost marshal, and citizens had been ordered to “be organized,” which Julia interpreted as a veiled warning to the people of Richmond not to plunder the city if it were evacuated. She overheard Ulys tell Rawlins and Ingalls that his informant’s observations strongly indicated that the enemy intended to retreat southwest to Lynchburg, and soon.

  Julia was equally concerned with news from the Union capital. Nearly every day, the newspapers from Washington and New York commented on the exhausted, careworn appearance of the president. Julia’s heart went out to him, and she worried that the enormous burden he carried would kill him if he could not set it down, if only for a brief respite.

  “Ulys,” Julia mused one evening after they had put Jesse to bed, “why don’t you invite Mr. and Mrs. Lincoln to visit headquarters and review the troops?”

  “If President Lincoln wants to come, he will,” Ulys replied. “He won’t wait to be asked.”

  “I’m not so sure.” Julia drew her chair closer to his and rested her head on his shoulder. “Ever since the war began he’s been unfairly maligned by the press for meddling in army affairs. I don’t think he’ll ever visit unless you invite him, rather than stir up that talk again.”

  “I suppose so,” said Ulys, but he looked dubious, and when one day and then another passed and no invitation was sent, Julia decided to pursue another tack.

  Young Jesse was not the only son of a great man in the encampment, for soon after Union troops had occupied Charleston, a new officer had joined Ulys’s staff at City Point—Captain Robert Lincoln, the president’s eldest son.

  In mid-January, Mr. Lincoln had sent Ulys a humble and sincere letter, which opened with the entreaty, “Please read and answer this letter as though I was not President, but only a friend.” His son Robert, he had explained, twenty-two years of age and recently graduated from Harvard, wished to see something of the war before it ended. “C
ould he,” Mr. Lincoln had asked, “without embarrassment to you, or detriment to the service, go into your Military family with some nominal rank, I, and not the public, furnishing his necessary means?” He had hoped that Ulys could find a post for Robert that would neither place him on the front lines nor bestow upon him a coveted position that ought to go to a more deserving veteran soldier, but if Ulys could not, “say so without the least hesitation, because I am as anxious, and as deeply interested, that you shall not be encumbered as you can be yourself.”

  What the president had not said, but what Julia had heard from others, was that Robert had long sought his parents’ blessing to enlist in the army, but Mrs. Lincoln, already bereft of two sons, had adamantly refused. Julia had wondered if Mrs. Lincoln had changed her mind with the end of the war seeming so near, or if Mr. Lincoln had not consulted her.

  “I will be most happy to have him in my Military family in the manner you propose,” Ulys had replied a few days later, writing on the torn-off, blank half of Mr. Lincoln’s letter for want of other paper. He had recommended the rank of captain and the role of assistant adjutant general, which Mr. Lincoln and his son had immediately and gratefully accepted.

  In the days that followed, as the president’s eldest son had settled into camp and into his new position on Ulys’s staff, Julia concluded that he was a noble, handsome young man who had inherited many of his father’s genial traits. Robert Lincoln enjoyed telling stories and jokes around the campfire and cheerfully joined in all the social pastimes at headquarters. Ulys observed approvingly that despite his father’s exalted position he expected to be treated no differently than any other officer. He never shirked his duties and he was always ready to take on his share of hard work. Julia was impressed that Captain Lincoln was determined to earn his own accolades like any other officer, but she could never entirely forget that he was the president’s son.