The Wages of Fame

by Thomas Fleming

  “I fear no lady can come in contact with the brawling shouters and shovers for democracy without becoming tragically coarsened, Miss Kemble,” Irving said.

  “I agree—absolutely!” said Fenimore Gardiner.

  “So do I,” said Angelica Van Rensselaer Stapleton, who was beginning to regard the entire conversation with distinct disapproval. Slim and erect, with angular, fine-boned features, she had a royal manner, which her exquisitely curled blond hair and fondness for diamond jewelry did nothing to diminish.

  It was a classic confrontation between youth and age—with Fenimore Gardiner deserting his generation to join the previous one. Irving was clearly uncomfortable, but Sladen would not drop the subject. “Your attitude puzzles me, Mr. Irving. Once, as I understand it from my late father, you were a staunch supporter of Colonel Aaron Burr, a sentiment my father shared so extravagantly it led to his ruin. Without Colonel Burr there would be no Tammany Hall, the very engine of democracy here in New York.”

  “It’s been twenty years since I supported Mr. Burr. Neither he nor I could foresee the consequences of all our youthful indiscretions,” Irving said. “I saw the Colonel on the street only the other day. He was looking a bit shabby, I’m sorry to say.”

  “Mr. Irving,” George Stapleton said, “while you were in Europe, you met many of the English poets. Would you share your impressions of them?”

  “Shelley was my favorite,” Irving said. “Partly because he had the most extraordinary wife. Any man who could write good poetry and keep Mary Wollstonecraft happy had to be a genius. After his death my playwright friend John Payne made the mistake of proposing to her. But she said Americans lacked moral grandeur—which eliminated me from the line of suitors as well.”

  “I’m a shameless worshiper of her mother,” Caroline Kemble said. “One of the first books I read as a girl was her Vindication of the Rights of Women. My grandmother considers it the greatest book ever written.”

  “An utterly seditious, atheistic document!” cried Angelica’s large, forbidding sister, Henrietta Van Rensselaer.

  “Was Shelley’s Mary an atheist?” Caroline asked Mr. Irving, ignoring Aunt Henrietta. Caroline seemed almost too eager to anticipate the answer to this question.

  “I’m quite certain she was. She and her mother both saw atheism as a prerequisite for revolution,” Irving said. “But my friend Payne was confident he could lead her to a commonsensical faith.”

  George began a labored defense of Shelley’s atheism, which he maintained was not intellectual but emotional, born of his sympathy for the poor and the oppressed. George was plainly trying to defend Caroline’s apparent approval of this stark theological stance.

  “You may be right,” Irving said. “But I fear the political timing of their poetic call for a new revolution was atrocious. After two decades of war and carnage in the wake of France’s upheaval, the world yearns for peace and stability. We’ve turned to the church, the school, the home, the government of men of proven talents and virtue, with a sigh of relief.”

  “Amen,” said Fenimore Gardiner.

  It was the triumphant voice of conservatism. Mr. Irving’s sunny optimism and aristocratic view of life made it sound inevitable to those of his age at the table. But the younger generation, minus Fenimore Gardiner, resisted this paean to the status quo.

  Even George Stapleton found himself among the doubters. “I’d almost suffer a revolution if it produced something as beautiful as Shelley’s ‘Ode to the West Wind,’” George said.

  “I’d suffer one without it,” John Sladen said, gazing down the table at Caroline Kemble. She was wearing a lingerie gown of faded red, obviously something she had inherited from her mother. The short sleeves and high neckline were distinctly unstylish. But her bare, sinuous arms, her marvelous face, caught every male eye. She was unquestionably the most beautiful woman at the table. John was ready to upend the entire social order to possess this tantalizing creature.

  “I fear neither of you young gentlemen have actually seen a revolution. It would change your minds, with or without an ode to the west wind,” Washington Irving said.

  “How true!” said the older generation virtually in unison. The excesses of the French Revolution had left deep scars in the human psyche everywhere—including distant America. Jeremy Biddle found himself inclined to agree with the seniors. His father had told him of mobs storming through the streets of his native Philadelphia, threatening to drag President George Washington out of his house and hang him.

  “We’ve survived one revolution,” John Sladen said. “Why not another?”

  “Our revolution, my dear young sir, was actually a rebellion,” Washington Irving said. “There was no revolt against the social order—excepting those supernumeraries from England who pretended to be at the top of it.”

  “Exactly,” declared the older generation in another burst of choral agreement.

  The dinner party ended in a rather strained atmosphere. After George’s mother bid Fenimore Gardiner and the older guests good-bye, she returned to the front parlor with a forbidding frown. “George,” she said, “would you mind staying for a half hour or so? There’s something I want to discuss with you.”

  That was the signal for John Sladen and Jeremy Biddle to depart—and for Caroline and Sally Stapleton to retreat to their rooms. Alone, mother and son faced each other warily. “What extraordinary taste in friends you have, George,” Angelica said. “I think I’ve remarked more than once on the peculiarity of your association with Mr. Sladen.”

  “He’s the cleverest man in my class, Mother,” George said. “Jeremy and I understand him very well, I assure you. He’s in no danger of seducing us into his wild political ideas. We see it as our task to moderate his opinions and make a useful citizen out of him.”

  “I have grave doubts about such pretensions to benevolence. But they’re mild compared to my thoughts of the extraordinary creature you’ve foisted on me as a houseguest. Does Caroline Kemble truly believe those opinions she declaimed at our table tonight? Mary Wollstonecraft! A woman whose private life—not to mention her public opinions—would bar her from every respectable home in England or America! Even France!”

  “She’s grown up under the influence of a grandmother who married a freethinking Englishman. I have no doubt you can easily persuade her to change her ways with a little kindness, Mother. Remember how often Father used to talk of the power of kindness?”

  “He had a Quaker mother,” Angelica Stapleton said. “Mine was Dutch—more inclined to a switch than a swatch of piety.”

  Thirteen years of widowhood, of managing her own affairs in a man’s world, had made Angelica Stapleton a rather hard woman on the surface. George knew her well enough to stand his ground. “Kindness is more than piety, Mother. Make her a daughter for a little while, as you’ve done with Sally. The girl’s starved for affection, I assure you.”

  This conversation must strike some readers as unusual—a young man lecturing his mother on maternal affection. But George Stapleton’s predominating characteristic was his remarkable sympathy for the emotions of others. In some respects he was a new kind of American, softened (too much, some would say) by the decades of prosperity in which he had been born and raised, gentled by the revolution in psychology that poets such as Keats and Shelley signaled, in which the intellect that ruled the eighteenth century had given way to the preeminence of feeling.

  “Be generous to her, Mother. Buy her some decent dresses. Persuade Sally to introduce her to some of her friends. Make her feel truly at home in this house and I guarantee you her extreme feelings will vanish like hoarfrost before a spring sun.”

  “You’re really the most extraordinary creature, George. No young man of my youth would ever have said such wise things to his headstrong mother.”

  “None of them had a mother he trusted absolutely. I know how generous your heart is, Mother, though you struggle to conceal it.”

  “That’s sheer flattery, George!” Angeli
ca Stapleton said, although she was pleased by the compliment. What woman could resist it? “Now I must ask you an important question. What do you hope to gain from my reformation of this wild Ohio creature into a sensible woman?”

  “A loving wife,” George said.

  THREE

  JOHN SLADEN BEGAN THE CONTEST by borrowing ten dollars from George Stapleton to take Caroline to the Bowery Theater. This splendid new building was a testament to New York’s growing opulence. Illuminated by hundreds of glass-shaded gas jets, it boasted no fewer than three thousand plush seats. The play was Pocahontas by George Washington Parke Custis, the step-grandson of George Washington.

  It was not a very good play but the actors brought the old story alive. After rescuing John Smith from being burned at the stake, Pocahontas married John Rolfe with the approval of her father, Chief Powhatan. The most striking character was imaginary—Pocahontas’s former Indian lover, Matacoran, whom John Smith defeats in battle. In the final scene, as a show of amity, Smith frees him. Matacoran spurns the gesture and refuses to surrender to the white men. He will go west to “the utmost verge of the land the Manitou gave his fathers” and live there “wild and free.”

  Somewhat improbably, John Smith hails this defiance and declares “the esteem of the English” will go with him.

  Strolling back to the Stapleton town house on Beekman Street through the usual evening throng, John Sladen asked Caroline if she agreed with Matacoran. Would she prefer to live wild and free rather than submit to society’s often idiotic customs and laws?

  “I would never submit to being a slave to such things,” Caroline said. “But if I chose to accept them, with the approval of my heart and head, that would be a different matter. Having grown up in Ohio when it was a wilderness infested by bears and Indians, I’m not averse to a little civilization.”

  “Do you really have such freedom of choice? Aren’t women in somewhat the same condition as Indians and Africans? Creatures who must make the best terms they can manage with the ruling power?”

  “We have our ways of ruling them in return.”

  “Excuse me,” John said. “I shouldn’t be inflicting my prejudices on you. When you spend most of your time with the rich, you grow weary with their smug conviction that they’re always right.”

  “Are you talking about George Stapleton?”

  “George is my friend. I don’t cast aspersions on my friends. He struggles to overcome the inevitable deficiencies of being born rich. I’m thinking more of that insufferable prig Fenimore Gardiner. Or his suave mentor, Washington Irving. Do you know why Irving is so ready to defend the administration of President John Quincy Adams?”

  Caroline could only shake her head. In her rural Ohio isolation, she knew little about the details of contemporary politics, beyond the broad clash between Democrats and conservatives, who were called Federalists in those days.

  “Mr. Irving’s just been appointed ambassador to Spain. A nice comfortable sinecure that will leave him with no need to fret about making money from his half-baked books.”

  “You feel his opinion of the president is for sale?”

  “I feel it’s been bought.”

  “I must confess I thought he was rather callous, the way he brushed aside your mention of your father’s devotion to Aaron Burr.”

  “Thank you.”

  “My father too had an attachment to Mr. Burr. He was one of the young bravos who joined his expedition to conquer Texas and possibly Mexico in 1806. My father never forgot the eloquence with which Mr. Burr described his dream of an American empire on the Rio Grande. It haunted him to the day of his death.”

  Sladen was too stunned to speak. Discovering this link between his lost father and Caroline’s father had transcendent meaning for him. He was instantly convinced that destiny had brought them together.

  “I don’t understand why an attachment to Mr. Burr would ruin your father in New York,” Caroline said. “It did my father no harm in Ohio.”

  “It’s a nice illustration of the way New Yorkers play dirty politics,” John said, making no attempt to disguise his bitterness.

  He described how ardently his father had admired Colonel Aaron Burr as he rose to power, first as U.S. senator, then, with the backing of Tammany Hall, as vice president on the triumphant ticket with President Thomas Jefferson in 1800. But Jefferson wanted his friend James Madison to succeed him and quietly undercut Burr, with the eager assistance of the Colonel’s numerous enemies in New York. Thomas Sladen had remained loyal even after Burr killed Alexander Hamilton in their famous 1804 duel, making himself a political pariah in New York. Burr compounded this blunder with his 1806 expedition down the Mississippi to conquer Texas, then a Spanish possession. President Jefferson indicted him for treason, accusing him of planning to detach the Western states from the Union and form a new nation. Burr was acquitted but his political reputation was ruined, this time on a national scale.

  All but a handful of Burrites made their peace with Jefferson and his New York satellite, Governor George Clinton. Stubbornly clinging to his fallen idol, Thomas Sladen saw his law practice dwindle to nothing. Old friends cut him in the street. Eventually, his morale collapsed and he fled west, a fugitive from numerous creditors.

  “Unfortunately, he didn’t live wild and free,” Sladen said. “He fell off a steamboat and drowned in the Ohio River.”

  “Oysters, fresh oysters!” bawled a fat, red-faced Irishwoman on the corner of Barclay Street and Broadway. She had her fare spread on a bed of ice in her rolling cart.

  “Let’s eat some of New York’s favorite food,” John said. “Maybe it will cool the fever in my brain that Aaron Burr tends to ignite.”

  Pity flooded Caroline’s heart. She saw how vulnerable he was beneath his truculent manner. She was discovering—or displaying—one of the more intriguing sides of the feminine mind. The prouder the woman, the more susceptible she is to that strange emotion that lives on the border of love—but in the end is love’s enemy.

  Caroline let John lecture her on the shapes and sizes of New York’s oysters. He called them the pâté de foie gras of the poor. They each devoured a half dozen of the crusty creatures sprinkled with a peppery tomato sauce, which the Irishwoman claimed was her own invention. It was a happy end to a pleasant evening. Caroline told him how grateful she was and they parted with her assurance that she would be glad to see him again soon.

  At 19 Beekman Street, Caroline found Angelica Stapleton and her sister Henrietta playing whist in the second parlor. Caroline described the play and rhapsodized over the beauty of the Bowery Theater. Angelica Stapleton was unimpressed by Caroline’s rural enthusiasm. She had hesitated to let Caroline go near the place. Although some of her friends went regularly, others felt theatergoing exposed them to taunts and catcalls—and occasional saliva—from the proponents of democracy in the balconies. She was shocked to discover that John Sladen had bought tickets in the very headquarters of that part of the audience, the second balcony.

  “How could you stand the smell?” Angelica asked.

  “I grew up on a farm,” Caroline said.

  “I’d be more concerned by their language and behavior,” Henrietta Van Rensselaer said. She was inclined to give no quarter to the lower orders.

  “They were as well behaved as the congregation at the Twin Forks Presbyterian Church,” Caroline said, summoning the only comparison she could make.

  “Humph,” Henrietta said, still skeptical. “I prefer the opera. It attracts less riffraff.”

  Angelica Stapleton gave Caroline one of her frosty smiles. “If you propose to go out this way, you should dress the part. Perhaps we ought to do some shopping tomorrow.”

  The next day being Saturday, at ten o‘clock Caroline and Angelica and Henrietta set forth on a round of the great stores and small shops. By the time they returned at three o’clock, Caroline had acquired a half dozen dresses in the latest London and Paris styles, with their full sleeves, low necklines, and richly embr
oidered hems. The skirts danced tantalizingly just above the ankle—which had not a little to do with their winning universal male approval. To this basic wardrobe they added for nightwear a blue turban decorated by white peacock feathers, several daytime feathered bonnets, a handsome muff, a half dozen pair of stylish shoes, and—the piece de résistance—a sky-blue redingote with bands of white corded silk down the front. It looked made-to-order for Caroline’s tall, slender figure.

  “How can I ever repay such generosity?” Caroline said as she tried on the dresses to the reiterated approval of the two older women.

  “We enjoyed every minute of it,” Angelica Stapleton said. “It made us feel young again.”

  “Believe it or not,” Henrietta said wistfully, “I had a figure like yours once. But then I fell in love with oysters and game hens and the like.” She now weighed enough to squash a small boy if she ever fell on him.

  The following Saturday, George Stapleton invited Caroline on a trip to the Elysian Fields. This was a pleasure park in Hoboken, created by steamboat builder John Stevens. At its center was a small circular railway, with a miniature steam engine and cars, similar to the larger ones Stevens hoped to build across New Jersey. Other men were laying tracks for the iron horses in Massachusetts and Maryland.

  They crossed the Hudson in a private pinnace George had hired for the occasion, with a crew of four. The sailors served champagne and lobster en route—a somewhat stark contrast to the humble oysters on a dirty plate that John Sladen had bought Caroline.

  George boyishly suggested a ride on the little train. As it chugged along, he remarked that his grandfather, Hugh Stapleton, thought they should invest in railroads. His Uncle Malcolm, who oversaw the family textile factories in New Jersey, was opposed. “What do you think?” George asked. “Can women’s nerves handle the speed of these things? They’ll go thirty, even thirty-five miles an hour.”