The Wages of Fame

by Thomas Fleming

  “I’m still going to think about it, Johnny.”

  Caroline said nothing. She was again trying to estimate her feelings face-to-face with John Sladen, this time at her own dining-room table. She found no disorder. She was as calm and distant as George.

  “Are you going to join forces with Van Buren in his plan to use this Eaton mess to wound the vice president? I assure you, if that shyster succeeds in ruining Calhoun, the country will live to regret it.”

  “He simply seems to be trying to help the president out of a very difficult situation, Johnny,” George said.

  “What do you think, Mrs. Stapleton?”

  John’s voice had a cutting edge. The use of her married name carried an unspoken irony that only they understood. Suddenly Caroline’s nerves were no longer inert. “I’m inclined to sympathize with Mrs. Eaton. I’m surprised you don’t,” she said.

  “I sympathize with her personally. But politically, I think every intelligent man and woman should suppress the emotion. John C. Calhoun deserves to be our next president. I would go so far as to say he must be our next president if this country is to survive. We can’t let a ridiculous quarrel like this ruin his chances.”

  “Oh, come now, Johnny,” George said. “That’s a bit much.”

  “I know it sounds far-fetched. But we’re dealing with ambitious men. As president, Calhoun will conciliate the South. We’ll get a lower tariff or no tariff at all. There’s a danger, a very real danger, of letting the South nurse its grievances, to go on year after year feeling they’re ignored and despised by the North. I’ve heard it a thousand times in New Orleans. My answer has always been, the Democrats of New York will stand by you, as they did when we elected Jefferson in 1800, and in every election since that date, until divisions destroyed the party in 1824 and let Adams into the White House.”

  “So Swartout is a Calhoun man?” George asked.

  “A better way to put it is, he’s not a Van Buren man. He sees that ambitious schemer destroying the Democratic Party. So do I. As president he’ll do nothing for the South. He’ll concentrate on doing things for Martin Van Buren and his friends.”

  John Sladen spoke prophetic words in the Stapleton dining room on that spring morning in 1829. But the century’s catastrophe was gathering beyond their sight, over the distant horizon. He was unable to ignite a sense of danger, a fear of upheaval. The Stapletons’ reactions remained more personal than political.

  George had never really liked John Sladen. His violent reaction to losing Caroline had hardly buttressed George’s opinion of his character. “I’m afraid you have a tendency go off half-cocked, Johnny. I speak as a friend. Don’t take it personally.”

  “How else am I supposed to take a remark like that?”

  “As a piece of advice. I don’t owe any of these gentlemen my allegiance. That belongs to only one man—Andrew Jackson. Whatever Caroline and I can do to help him be a better president, we’ll do, no matter who or what we disappoint. Don’t you agree, dear?”

  Caroline Kemble Stapleton gazed steadily at John Sladen. “Yes. I agree, totally.”

  Again, a single word carried with it a private message that said more than a six-hour speech by Daniel Webster or Henry Clay. For a bitter moment, Caroline rejoiced at the pain on John Sladen’s face. She was telling him that she and George Stapleton were married, not merely spiritually and physically, but politically. They were an enterprise over which Sladen could never hope to acquire control.

  Across John Sladen’s face flashed grief, remorse, and a hint of the bitter despair that had stirred ruinous pity in Caroline Kemble’s heart in that Manhattan basement. “George, I know I behaved badly in New York,” he said. “I’m prepared to apologize for it, to make any amends in my power. I don’t want personal antagonism to intrude here. What I’m saying is too important for the future of the country.”

  What was he really saying? Not for the last time, Caroline began translating John Sladen’s conversations with George into a personal communication intended for her. John did not consider George Stapleton capable of thinking about the future of the country. Only Caroline Kemble had that capacity. He was here, accepting the humiliation of his rout as her suitor, swallowing George’s condescension, because he truly believed what he was saying—and her capacity to understand it.

  “Johnny, I hold no grudge for words spoken in anger,” George said. “It’s not my way. I assure you there’s no personal animosity at work here. Not on my part—and certainly not on Caroline’s part. We’re feeling our way through a new part of the forest. If we disagree, it’s of no great moment. We’re all beginners in this political game.”

  “That’s true enough. But the game is not just beginning. It’s closer to the halfway mark. We can’t afford too many mistakes.”

  “When and if you see us making one, by all means feel free to come here and lecture us to your heart’s content. If we disagree, let’s vow here and now to stay friends. Don’t you agree, Caroline?”

  Friends? In a corner of her soul, the Caroline who had succumbed to pity shook her head. No, never. This man could never be a mere friend. In the center of her soul, the Caroline who had become Mrs. George Stapleton nodded and smiled serenely. “Of course,” she said.

  FOUR

  “FORTY POUNDS OF COTTON OUT of every hundred we grow—that’s what the tariff costs us, Mr. Stapleton. Can you ask us to make such a sacrifice to keep the profits of your mills at twenty-five percent?”

  The speaker was Senator Robert Young Hayne of South Carolina, a slender, fair-haired man with a petulant mouth and a deep mellifluous voice that frequently throbbed with emotion. The Stapletons were dining at the comfortable Washington house of Vice President John C. Calhoun. Senator Simon Legrand, his son, Victor, his sister, Clothilde, and John Sladen were among the twenty guests. Black servants glided around the impeccably set table, depositing an array of fish, game, and fowl that more than matched the hospitality of President Jackson in the White House.

  Mrs. Calhoun, pretending utter disinterest in the tense conversation between the men, asked Caroline if she was still nursing her baby. Caroline replied that she had found a wet nurse, the wife of one of the Irish laborers who were flooding into the District to work on the many new houses and government buildings under construction. Mrs. Calhoun sighed and said she did not want to upset her, but there was always a danger of infection from a wet nurse.

  “I lost my first child, the sweetest baby girl, at six months. I blamed it on the wet nurse. Ever since, I’ve nursed all my babies for a full year, trial though it is.”

  Caroline struggled to control her anxiety. She assured Mrs. Calhoun that she had tried to select a nurse whose habits were sober and family life sound. Simultaneously she tried to hear what George Stapleton was saying to Senator Hayne.

  “We must and can adjust matters to our mutual satisfaction, Senator. We’re not spending our profits from Principia Mills on luxurious living. We’re reinvesting them in a railroad across New Jersey,” George said. “Why can’t Northern banks loan the South money to build railroads and steamboats to lower the cost of shipping your cotton? Eventually help you build factories to turn it into cloth.”

  “Shipyards, factories, are contrary to the genius of our people,” Hayne said. “We’re agriculturists. The sort of men and women Thomas Jefferson saw as the best guardians of American liberty.”

  Presiding at the head of the table, a small smile on his lined, angular face, was the vice president. His jet-black hair was brushed back in thick strands that seemed to lie uneasily on his large head. “You occupy a singularly important position in the North, Mr. Stapleton,” he said in his husky voice, which did not have a trace of a Southern accent. “You can help us talk to your brethren in a spirit of moderation that sometimes escapes our high-toned temperaments.”

  “Calomel,” Mrs. Calhoun said to Caroline. “Calomel is a great restorative to an infant if he grows feverish. Do you plan to live here in Washington, Mrs. Stapleton?”


  “Yes. I’m quite fascinated by—by politics.”

  “Aren’t we all,” Mrs. Calhoun said with a smile that managed to convey a hint of menace. “Have you heard the latest outrage perpetrated by Mrs. Eaton?”

  The dinner was one of several John Sladen and his mentor, Senator Legrand, had arranged for the Stapletons’ education on the South’s politi-cal attitudes. Legrand apparently ruled Louisiana almost as thoroughly as Hugh Stapleton had dominated New Jersey. A word from him put the new congressman and his wife on numerous guest lists. This dinner at the Calhouns was the most important so far, and the most puzzling. The vice president seemed content to preside and let more belligerent Southerners do the talking. His few remarks abhorred conflict and seemed to praise compromise.

  This word seemed foreign to his wife’s temperament. Floride Calhoun began telling the ladies and gentlemen within reach of her conversation about a dispute that had broken out between Peggy Eaton and the wife of the Dutch envoy, Madame Huygens. This lady, known for her temper and her generous embonpoint, had announced she was going to give a dinner party for the presidents’ cabinet that would exclude Mrs. Eaton. The president was threatening to revoke the ambassador’s passport and expel them from the country.

  “It’s bad enough that this matter has gotten into our newspapers. Now it will travel abroad,” Mrs. Calhoun said. “Our friends in the White House tell us the president is so overwrought about Mrs. Eaton, he sleeps not at all. He may soon be unfit to carry on the duties of his office.”

  “Now, now, Floride dear,” Vice President Calhoun said. “I’m sure that’s an exaggeration.”

  “I sincerely hope so,” Fluoride said.

  Was there a carefully orchestrated plan at work here? Caroline wondered. What better way to ruin the health of an already grief-stricken old man than to harass him with a repetition of the slanders that had killed his wife? But there was no way to penetrate the mask of civility and good breeding on the faces around the table.

  At times Caroline found herself not quite able to believe that the Eaton affair was actually happening. Peggy O’Neale Eaton was threatening the stability of the American government. Washington, D.C., made Caroline’s Wollstonecraftish complaints about women’s lot seem so much adolescent prattle. Women wielded amazing amounts of power in this capital city.

  Caroline filled the mails with letters to Sarah Polk. Since Congress was not yet in session, Sarah and her husband had retreated to Tennessee to escape choosing sides in the Eaton imbroglio. Sarah’s strict Presbyterian upbringing inclined her to support those who deplored Peggy’s elevation to respectability. But she decided it would be hazardous for someone from Tennessee to express such an opinion with Andrew Jackson in the White House.

  “Have you visited the South, Mr. Stapleton?” the vice president asked.

  “No,” George said. “A great omission, I begin to think.”

  “You must spend some time with us at Fort Hill. There we can stretch our minds while we relax our souls.”

  “I’d be honored,” George said. On the dining-room wall was a fine watercolor of the Calhoun plantation in the Carolina hill country—a white-pillared mansion, its drive lined with tall cedars.

  “You must also visit Charleston. You can’t omit Charleston,” Floride Calhoun said.

  “I worry about the impression Charleston will make,” Senator Hayne said. “There’s grass growing in many streets. The harbor is empty. I fear a man who’s lived in New York will dismiss us as poverty-stricken failures.”

  “Have no fear about that, Senator,” George said. “New York’s condescension doesn’t sit well with Jerseymen.”

  The pleased expressions on the faces of the Southerners around the table made Caroline realize they interpreted this commonplace New Jersey sentiment as a rebuke to Martin Van Buren’s ambitions. Sitting on her night table was an invitation to a dinner party that the secretary of state was giving in Mrs. Eaton’s honor. It would be a severe test for all the Jacksonians in Washington, D.C. In her latest letter, Sarah Polk had advised Caroline to accept—or to retreat to her home state.

  Let us be realistic. To offend Andrew Jackson is no small matter. You and George have won his affection. Since Mrs. Eaton’s reputation is not a matter of conscience with you, it seems to me your course is clear.

  By this time, Caroline had explained to her friend that she was without religious belief. Sarah Polk had accepted this profession of atheism without a hint of rebuke. A godless life was almost unimaginable to her, she said. But it was a free country.

  Vice President Calhoun was talking about the future of the United States as he saw it. The table fell silent. “The South’s voice must be heard in the highest councils of the nation,” he said. “Not merely heard, but heeded. We stand for liberty against the encroachments of the federal government. History already tells us this is no small concern. In 1798, when President John Adams and his Congress passed the Sedition Acts, making it a crime for a newspaper, or a congressman, to criticize the government, Virginia and Kentucky passed resolutions, written by none other than Thomas Jefferson, warning that a state may find it necessary to interpose its power to prevent the execution of an unjust law—in a word to declare it nullified.”

  “With all due respect to Mr. Jefferson’s memory, where does that leave the Union?” George asked. “My inheritance comes down from Washington, not Jefferson. My grandfather often told me there was only one historical document worth reading—Washington’s farewell address. In it, he tells us that the Union is our most precious legacy.”

  “No one reveres the Union more than the men of the South,” Calhoun said. “We only ask that it be administered for the equal welfare of all the states.”

  The emphasis on administered needed no translation for Caroline. Presidents administered the government. Congress merely legislated. Across the table, John Sladen’s eyes sought hers. Now do you believe me? he asked. Here was a man who wanted to be president—and deserved to be president. He had been a senator, a cabinet member, and had twice been elected vice president by the American people.

  “Are you planning to attend Secretary of State Van Buren’s dinner in honor of Mrs. Eaton?” Floride Calhoun asked Caroline.

  Suddenly the room was charged with new tension. Caroline realized more was at work here than a mere exposition of the South’s political views. She and George were being asked to choose sides, to shun sly, slippery Martin Van Buren and join the camp of honorable, straightforward John C. Calhoun. The decision would be irrevocable. You could not snub Peggy Eaton on Monday and dance with her on Tuesday.

  Across the table, John Sladen made a final, silent plea. Caroline rejected it, for exactly the same reason that she was about to reject Floride Calhoun’s ultimatum. She disliked being coerced, maneuvered, on the assumption that she and George were political children and could not think for themselves. In the momentary silence, she had also found an answer that would, she hoped, meet the exquisite standards of Washington politics.

  “I fear we must go,” Caroline said. “Not for Mrs. Eaton’s sake, or Mr. Van Buren’s sake. But for President Jackson’s sake. We traveled to Tennessee to meet him, as you may know. We heard from Mrs. Jackson’s own lips the torment the slanders against her reputation caused them. What you just told me about his sleeplessness, his agitation, made up my mind.”

  “But the cases are entirely different!” Floride Calhoun said.

  “In the president’s mind, I fear they’re identical. He made that all too clear to us when we dined at the White House a month ago.”

  “I share my wife’s opinion,” George Stapleton said. “I have no illusions about our importance. But I wouldn’t want to add even a speck to the president’s distress.”

  “The man is an uncouth dotard!” Floride Calhoun said.

  “Floride, calm yourself,” Vice President Calhoun said.

  “I’m tired of playing that humble part! I say let the storm begin! Let’s put the old fool to the test!
”

  Caroline remembered Sarah Polk’s analysis of Charleston’s growing poverty and mounting resentment and marveled at her friend’s perspicacity. Even more startling was this glimpse inside the Calhoun marriage, the tension between the angry Charlestonian and the levelheaded upcountry planter, between the partisan and the statesman, between the heart and the head of the South. Floride Calhoun obviously felt her husband should be president, now. She wanted him to begin asserting his right to be the master of Washington, D.C.

  Riding home in their carriage, the Stapletons were silent until George spoke. “I congratulate you on your reply to Mrs. Calhoun.”

  “Thank you,” Caroline said.

  “Those are deeply troubled people. For the first time I’m beginning to worry about the future of our country.”

  “Let’s concentrate on your future for the time being. I’m glad we agree that we have to go to Mr. Van Buren’s party. But I see no reason for you to join his political party.”

  “I agree on that too.”

  The secretary of state had rented the Pennsylvania Avenue mansion in which Henry Clay, his predecessor, had resided. To the party flocked all the diplomats and their wives, including the controversial Madame Huygens, who was loud in her denials that she ever planned to insult Mrs. Eaton. The president’s threat to send her husband packing had cooled her moral fervor. Numerous members of the old Washington and Virginia aristocracy also appeared. The most startling of these was Thomas Jefferson’s widowed daughter, tall, austere Martha Jefferson Randolph. It was an unquestioned coup to have the daughter of the founder of the Democratic Party apparently giving her blessing to Mrs. Eaton. But the Calhouns, and the wives of the three Calhoun cabinet members, were conspicuously absent, as were Emily Donelson and her husband.

  Moreover, when Mr. Van Buren led Peggy Eaton to the floor to begin the contredanse, the number of women who declined to join her was conspicuous. Only Mrs. Barry, the pretty wife of the postmaster general, displayed any enthusiasm for the performance. Caroline coolly led George into the lineup, and the musicians struck up a country tune. Never had she felt more tension in the air as they bowed and whirled and exchanged partners in the usual way.