The Wages of Fame

by Thomas Fleming

  Trapped in this political maze, the Democrats floundered. The only soldier on the horizon whose fame equaled Taylor’s was Winfield Scott, but he was a Whig, on record as despising Democrats in general and James K. Polk in particular. A Southerner was equally out of the question, because Taylor, born in Virginia and living in Louisiana, also held that card.

  The Democrats turned to Lewis Cass, the deep-throated, bullnecked senator from Michigan, who had served in Jackson’s cabinet and had fluttered aloft at the Democratic Convention that nominated James Polk. Cass gave the party a chance to win the West and the border states, and he was unobjectionable to Democrats in their Eastern strongholds. He could carry the Jackson banner, and he did his best to hoist it high. In Jackson’s name he approved the war and the acquisition of Texas and every square inch of the new territories. He said as little as possible about President Polk but damned Congressman Wilmot and his proposal to bar slavery in the new territories as a threat to the solidarity of the Union.

  From New York came news that destroyed any chance of a Democrat defeating Taylor. The bitter old fox, Martin Van Buren, announced he was running for president as an antislavery “free soil” Democrat. He backed Wilmot’s proviso and insisted that no Democrat with a conscience could vote for Senator Cass. For a vice president, to guarantee his spoiler’s role, Van Buren chose Charles Francis Adams, son of John Quincy Adams. John Sladen could only babble Democratic outrage. He told Caroline of trying to persuade the president to denounce Van Buren as a traitor to the party and the country. All he could get from the spent Polk was a sigh: “Mr. Van Buren is the most fallen man I have ever known.”

  Van Buren and Adams won only 10 percent of the vote nationwide. But they took enough votes away from Cass in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and New York to give those normally Democratic bastions to General Taylor, making him president by a whiskery thirty-six electoral votes. Caroline could not imagine a worse humiliation for Sarah and James Polk. A majority of the people had swallowed the Whigs’ lies and elected the man who had wrecked the president’s plan for a swift victory in Mexico and then slandered Polk in the newspapers for failing to support him and his army. The people, an entity in which Caroline had never had much faith, sank to minus zero in her political calculus.

  On the morning after the election, Caroline came downstairs to Bowood’s breakfast room to find Senator Stapleton reading the newspapers with a cheerful expression on his face. “You look like you’re almost glad Senator Cass lost,” Caroline said.

  “I’m glad that Van Buren lost. He’s reduced himself to a cipher, in and out of the Democratic Party. It proves that slavery isn’t an issue to most voters. They think the Union is a lot more important.”

  He pointed to the voter totals in New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania. “We’ll get a lot of them back in 1852. Taylor is going to be a disaster in the White House. The next president will be a Democrat—if we keep our heads and avoid feuds and fanaticism.”

  “A rather large if.”

  “You sound as if you hope I’m wrong.”

  “What does it matter what I think? I’m a mere woman.”

  George put down the newspapers. “You’ll never be a mere woman to me—or to anyone else who knows you.”

  George had returned to New Jersey for the 1848 campaign. He had spent many of his nights at Bowood. They had dined together. They had exchanged observations and comments about the candidates. It was impossible not to converse. Especially when Paul returned from his Georgetown school for the summer. They had gone to Kemble Manor for July and August. Caroline could think of no plausible excuse for sweltering in Bowood. The result was more conversation, and disturbing memories of happy summers in that enchanted house.

  Was George suggesting they negotiate some sort of truce? Caroline regarded him through the reversed lens of her telescope. It was easily adapted to a personal dimension. He had no idea what she thought or felt, of course. He did not know he was dealing with a creature who had retreated to her cave of ice. The telescope reduced George to the size of a beetle. He even looked a little like one, with the flesh of middle age on his thickening neck. He sat there, looking ready to scuttle for cover if she so much as stamped her foot.

  Shoving her telescope aside, what did she see? A presidential candidate. The Democrats, singed twice in eight years by the Whigs’ penchant for generals, would likely turn to a general in 1852. George was an authentic hero. Four years of marinating his Mexican exploits in the newspapers and in a book or two could easily convert him into a front-runner. But did it matter? Did she care? He could not prevent the South from seceding. Could she covertly accelerate the process as his supposed helpmate?

  She rather liked that idea. It amused her. That was the only way to flavor her life in the ice cave—with the perfume of amusement. “I’m not prepared to let you touch me,” she said.

  “I understand.”

  “I have no feeling for you whatsoever.”

  “I understand.”

  “Why do you want a zombie as a wife?”

  “I want you as a wife, no matter what you say you are. That way we can hope to. forgive each other.”

  “I don’t think it will happen. Events are likely to increase the loathing.”

  “I don’t loathe you. I could never even come close to such a thing.”

  She refused to answer him in kind. The implication was all too clear. Perhaps someday she would explain how he had destroyed not one but two loves in her heart.

  “I’ll come back to Washington after the Polks leave.”

  “Why not sooner?”

  She shook her head. “After they leave.” She was not required to explain anything to him—or anyone else.

  They turned to the problem of Charlie. He had just been thrown out of Princeton for the same reason he had been expelled from North Carolina—a total neglect of his studies. Caroline urged George to consent to sending him to New Orleans with enough money to launch a career as a cotton broker, under John Sladen’s supervision. George bristled at the mention of Sladen’s name and swore he did not want Charlie exposed to his influence.

  “Isn’t it time we gave Charlie a chance to become a man on his own terms—not ours?” Caroline said.

  Was she conspiring against her husband in the name of Charlie’s freedom? She knew exactly what he would do when he got to New Orleans, with its endless procession of available women. Was she trying to give one of her sons—the one she secretly loved the most—a chance to enjoy the wild desire she had denied herself in the name of that spurious goddess, fame?

  The questions, which she declined to answer, made Caroline wonder if she too was a tiny insect in someone’s eye—perhaps God’s.

  Jonathan, ever the dutiful oldest son, would soon graduate from Columbia and apparently had no objection to going to work for the Camden & Amboy Railroad. Caroline liked that almost as much as she liked the thought of Charlie in New Orleans. Jonathan was so earnest, so devoted to the Stapleton family’s honor and fame. What would he do if she told him he had scarcely an ounce of their sacred patriotic blood in his veins?

  Another amusing thought. But she saw no point in disillusioning Jonathan. She was thoroughly in favor of maintaining all their illusions—even Charlie’s. Only she, in her airless cave festooned with icy stalactites and failed memories, had no illusions. Only she knew what was going to happen—and she did not care.

  “Sarah Polk asks for you every time she sees me,” George said.

  “Why?” Caroline said.

  “She’s very fond of you.”

  “I love her. But we have nothing to say to each other anymore.”

  “She must be unhappy. Imagine having to smile and shake hands with President-elect Taylor? I don’t think I can do it. The man’s a charlatan.”

  “She’ll do it.”

  After all, I’m conversing with you as if I did not loathe you. That’s almost as difficult as conversing with Zachary Taylor. Women are resourceful creatures. They have an
almost infinite capacity for submission.

  “Poor Jim Polk. He never had any luck. Not one stroke of it.”

  “I never wished him any. I wanted him to deserve his fame.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It’s a line from an old play.”

  Once more, it was impossible to explain. Once more she was forced to confront how much of her heart had belonged to Sarah Childress Polk.

  Caroline stayed in Bowood while George returned to Washington for the final session of Congress in President Polk’s administration. Nothing of any consequence transpired, and Zachary Taylor was duly installed as president of the United States on March 5, 1849. The Polks had moved out of the White House the previous night and were staying at the Indian Queen. George skipped the inaugural ball that evening and went to the hotel to say good-bye to them. He found the ex-president extremely agitated and Sarah trying desperately to calm him.

  In a letter to Caroline, George described the scene.

  Polk was lying on a couch, his face as brown as the rug. Sarah was saying, “It’s over, James. It’s not our responsibility” anymore.”

  “It’s easy for you to say that,” Polk snarled. “They won’t mention you in the history books. They won’t call you a man who was too small for the job.”

  “Mr. President,” I said. “That’s not what the historians will say, I’m sure of it.”

  “Oh, no?” Polk said. “Wait until you hear what Taylor said to me today on the way to the inaugural ceremony.”

  Taylor had announced that he supported the Wilmot Proviso and intended to do everything in his power to prevent slavery from spreading to the new territories. He added that he saw no point in trying to rule states as distant as California and Oregon. He thought they should be allowed to become independent! Poor Polk was speechless. I could see why he was still upset. This brainless old faker was going to unravel everything Polk had devoted four agonizing years to achieving.

  Caroline reached Washington a week after the Polks departed. She was instantly deluged with calls and notes from well-wishers, eager to congratulate her on the recovery of her health. George had told everyone she had retreated to New Jersey to recover from some unnamed affliction. The household at 3600 Pennsylvania Avenue welcomed her with equal enthusiasm. Mercy Flowers still presided in the kitchen, and the Parks sisters had kept the rest of the house spotless and gleaming.

  “If you have a mind, you could hold one of your salons tonight, mistress,” Mercy said.

  “I don’t think there will be any more salons,” Caroline said. “I’m not a politician anymore.”

  There was one missing face—Tabitha Flowers. Mercy told Caroline that Tabitha had married a free black man named Rhodes. “She still blames the senator for her father’s gettin’ killed in Mexico,” Mercy said.

  Caroline studied Mercy and Tabitha through her psychological telescope. Everyone was equal through this magical lens—equally insignificant. They were dust motes, twisting and dancing in the meaningless winds of eternity. But she said all the right things about how sorry she was, how much she wished she could talk to Tabitha.

  In the newspapers, Caroline followed the Polks’ progress toward Nashville. Sarah had told George they planned to go home via New Orleans, rather than travel west through Pennsylvania and Ohio, states where the Democratic ex-president might have encountered hostile crowds. They journeyed south by train and steamboat, often pausing in places such as Montgomery, Alabama, to be honored at public dinners.

  At New Orleans, Polk’s 1844 campaign nickname, Young Hickory, was revived by enthusiastic crowds, and for a few days he enjoyed the reflected glow of Andrew Jackson’s fame. But Caroline noted signs of trouble in the newspaper accounts. The reporter for the New York Herald commented on how easily the ex-president tired and how reluctant he was to eat the rich food served at one of the public banquets. At Memphis, doctors hurried aboard the steamboat to examine Polk, who feared he had contracted cholera. Caroline knew what that meant—the president’s “complaint,” the diarrhea that had sapped his strength, had returned.

  At Nashville, an immense crowd greeted the Polks at the steamboat dock. Again, the New York Herald’s reporter noted that the ex-president was visibly exhausted by the brief ceremony. But the next day’s story, describing the Polks in the handsome house Sarah had chosen for their retirement, seemed to promise peace and contentment. For the next two months, their names vanished from the newspapers as the new president began the task of governing the divided nation.

  Caroline continued her life as a spiritual cave dweller. From an enormous distance she heard George denounce Zachary Taylor’s idiotic policies, which were certain to bring on a crisis with the South. George’s voice was as tiny as his physique. Everyone she saw in her rare ventures downtown was equally minute. Even the great Daniel Webster was the size of a toy soldier. His voice, lamenting the absence of her salon as Washington’s only island of civilization, was a squeak, a comic parody of pride.

  On June 16, 1849, when Caroline came down to breakfast, she noticed a peculiar expression on George’s face. It was a combination of sorrow and anxiety. “What’s wrong?” she asked. “Has something happened to Charlie?” For a moment she actually felt an emotion. She realized love, or some imitation of it, was still alive in her soul.

  George handed the Washington Union to Caroline as she sat down at the breakfast table. The headline above the story in the center of the front page read, “President Polk Dead.” The reporter described how he had visited Polk only two weeks earlier and found him striding across the lawn of his house, directing workmen who were cutting down some dead cedars. He seemed content and healthy. But the next day it rained and he spent it indoors, arranging his library. The labor of reaching books from the floor and placing them on the shelves brought. on fatigue and a slight fever, wrote the reporter, which the next day assumed the character of disease in the form of chronic diarrhea, a complaint of many years standing, and easily induced upon his system by any overexertion.

  “Imagine dying from putting a few books on shelves,” George said. “It shows how little strength he had left.”

  “Yes,” Caroline said.

  “The White House devoured that poor fellow. It makes me wonder if I’m crazy to think about going anywhere near the place.”

  “Yes.”

  George’s voice and Caroline’s own voice echoed in her ears, as if she were standing in a huge temple. That was, in fact, where she was standing—in the Temple of Fame. Through the shadowy light, she saw Sarah beside the empty pedestal reserved for James Knox Polk. She was wearing black. Her face was concealed by a black veil.

  “But I think I could handle it better than poor Jim. Somehow, he never seemed big enough for the job. Not just physically but, well, spiritually, for want of a better word. Although I still say he did it well. Damn well for a man who wasn’t up to it.”

  “Yes.”

  Caroline fled upstairs and summoned Mercy Flowers. “Have one of the servants take this to the Western Union office,” she said, simultaneously scribbling the message to Sarah Childress Polk.

  THERE ARE NO WORDS

  CAROLINE

  But in Caroline Kemble Stapleton’s icy mind and heart, one word was very much alive. It pulsed like some sort of evil child in her body and blood and brain, waiting for the moment of birth. The word was vindication.

  TWO

  “GOOD MORNING, MRS. STAPLETON. HOW is General Stapleton today?”

  “Very well, General Quitman,” Caroline said.

  Congressman John A. Quitman of Mississippi shook water from his blue army cloak. A cold April rain sluiced from the gray Washington sky. The general, who lived next door with his wife and two daughters, was taking advantage of George’s standing offer of a ride to the Capitol in the Stapleton carriage. Congressmen who came from distant parts of the country lacked the inclination and often the cash to bring horses and a carriage with them.

  Quitman had served in Mexico a
s a major general. Almost as tall as George, the Mississippian had something of an Old Testament prophet in his manner and appearance. Bold blue eyes surmounted a white well-trimmed beard. In Congress he was given to explosive, declamatory speeches, many of them about the failure to annex all of Mexico, the rest about the South’s other wrongs and resentments.

  “George’s speech yesterday was grand. It helps to know one Northern man has the courage to stand up for the South’s rights.”

  “I think his cause is the Union, General.”

  “Yes. I suppose it is.”

  The general’s lack of enthusiasm for that crucial word was all too apparent. Caroline had become adept at detecting the secessionists in the Democratic Party. She did or said nothing to encourage them. She was still a mere spectator of events. But by day, she emerged from her ice cave to mingle in the real world of Washington, D.C. Instinct had warned her that she needed the company of fellow humans to preserve her sanity. Too long a sojourn in that shadowy cavern would lead to its grisly counterpart in the real world—a room in an asylum.

  Instinct—and Sarah Childress Polk. After months of mutual silence, they had begun to correspond. Caroline told her everything—the cave, her hunger for vindication. Sarah gently chastised her. She did not want to believe that the war she had encouraged James Polk to fight would lead to the collapse of the Union. She urged Caroline to forgive George, as she had forgiven James. She lectured her on the vulnerability of men, their helplessness in the face of the world’s cruelty. Caroline read the words and felt nothing. Gradually, she began to pity Sarah. Death had driven her to this aberrant embrace of hope, this desperate exhortation to forgive. She was really trying to forgive herself—to ask her God for this ultimate gift. Caroline, with no need to propitiate a god, refused to forgive George Stapleton, saw no need to forgive herself, and grimly looked forward to vindication.