by Gore Vidal
“Howdy, sir, Mr. President Lincoln,” said one.
The other just touched his cap; and blushed.
“Boys,” said Lincoln to the volunteers, “carry on, as you were. And you pair of codgers,” he said to his sons, “stop pestering our defenders.”
“They enjoy our company very much. Don’t you, sir?” said Willie, looking up at the tonguetied youth. Hay was struck by the child’s vocal resemblance to his mother; even to the way that he used the word “sir” more as punctuation than politeness.
“Sure, Willie,” said the Kentuckian. With that, Willie was again hoisted on the volunteer’s back as was Tad, whose contribution to the scene had been noisy but incomprehensible. There were times, to Hay’s ear, when the beloved son of his beloved President sounded exactly like a goose in extremis. The volunteers galloped off. At the door, Old Edward said to Lincoln, “They’re at it cooking again. In the East Room, sir.”
“Well, as long as they don’t use the furniture for kindling …” Lincoln paused in the entrance hall and looked toward the open door to the East Room, where a hundred Kentuckians were billeted. Smoke filled a fireplace where something large and quadruped was being roasted. The volunteers were in a fine mood; one played a banjo, while the others sang.
“Smells good,” said Lincoln, motioning for Hay to follow him into the Blue Room, empty now of Baltimoreans and filled with Mary’s Coterie, as Cousin Lizzie called those few who still came to pay court to the beleaguered First Lady of the divided land.
Mary sat in an armchair, back to a window, while Senator Sumner and Cousin Lizzie shared a loveseat without any great outward sign of amorousness or even amiability. On another loveseat, sat two men; one was known to Hay by sight and repute. This was the handsome, dashing—the press tended to run together the two adjectives when referring to New York’s forty-two-year-old former New York congressman and now brigadier-general—Dan Sickles, who was pleasant-enough looking to Hay’s cold, youthful eye. But then, for Hay, anyone older than thirty was already a palpable dinner for worms and not to be regarded seriously in a fleshly way. Nevertheless, this small officer with the narrow waist, deep-circled eyes and full moustaches, was not only a notorious lady-killer but also a gentleman-killer—literally, a gentleman-killer. Two years earlier, Washington’s district attorney, the equally handsome and dashing Philip Barton Key, son of Francis Scott, who had written Hay’s least favorite patriotic song, had shown the sort of attention to Congressman Sickles’s wife that Sickles found intolerable. One day, as Mr. Key was signalling Mrs. Sickles from the sidewalk, Mr. Sickles shot him. Mr. Key was taken to the Old Club House, where he expired in what was now Governor Seward’s dining room, a source of endless fascination to the premier, who liked, especially at table, to enact Key’s hideous death agonies.
The ensuing trial delighted the entire nation. Sickles was defended by the soon-to-be attorney-general, Edwin M. Stanton, who made the jury weep as he recounted the sufferings of his client when first he learned that the horns had been placed upon his unsuspecting and altogether innocent brow. So overwhelmed was the jury that Stanton was able to get them to accept a plea of something that Stanton had invented called “temporary insanity”—extremely temporary insanity, as it proved, because had it lasted longer than a day or two Mr. Sickles might have been obliged to resign from Congress. As Seward had said to Lincoln in Hay’s presence, “Any lawyer who can do what Mr. Stanton did in that case, can probably do anything.” Lincoln had agreed that he himself had never pulled off such a miracle in court.
As introductions were made, Sickles shook Hay’s hand, very man-to-man. Sickles was having his problems with the governor of New York over the brigade that he had raised. The President was supposed to intercede, thanks to Madam’s latest favorite and chief courtier, one Henry Wikoff, an old friend of Sickles who was known as the Chevalier. While Lincoln and Sumner conferred, Hay sat a moment with the Chevalier, a stout, honest-faced man with gray eyes and hair, and brown moustaches that looked as if they might have been gray, too, given a chance.
“I knew Mr. Sickles—I should say General, now—in London.” Wikoff smiled charmingly. He spoke with what Hay thought of as the Sumner Boston Brahmin—or whatever it was—accent. “When Mr. Sickles was with our legation, we saw a good deal of each other back in the fifties. Then, of course, when he was in Congress, he was close to my old friend President Buchanan.”
Hay noticed that Wikoff was holding a book, partly concealed by his frock coat. “What is the book, sir?”
Wikoff flushed. “A present for Madam President. Do you think it presumptuous? To give her one’s own book?”
Wikoff showed Hay the slender volume entitled The Adventures of a Roving Diplomatist by Henry Wikoff. Hay opened the book; turned the pages; said, politely, “You have roved in many countries, sir. Your title …?”
“Oh, good Americans cannot have titles, sir. But it used to amuse Mr. Buchanan to call me Chevalier because I was so honored by Queen Isabella of Spain, for a small service I did her Most Catholic Majesty.”
For Hay, any news of the great world across the Atlantic was spellbinding. He envied Henry Adams, who would soon go to England with his father, once the Ancient got around to making the appointment. “You know the Emperor Napoleon?” Hay’s eye had seen this name more than once as he turned the pages.
“Oh, yes. I’ve always been a Bonapartist. I first knew the emperor’s uncle, Joseph Bonaparte. You see, I was at the American legation in London. This was around 1836, years before Mr. Sickles served there, of course. I was an attaché, which means that I was a spoiled young man with more money than was good for him and a liking for adventure. Since then, what I have managed to lose in money I have gained in adventure, beginning with my mission for Joseph, which was to smuggle out of France some of the first empress’s jewels. I was rewarded with a silver cup and the family’s friendship. During the six years that Napoleon III was in prison at the fortress of Ham, I often brought him messages from the outside world. As a reward, when he became emperor, he made me a chevalier of the Legion of Honor.”
“Twice a chevalier!” said Hay, enormously impressed. “So what brings you here to …” For Hay the word “prosaic” or something like it was floating about in his head, but then he remembered that as dim and unexciting and republican as the United States was, they were still in the presence of its homely and most puissant Chief of State. So “this dull place” became “Washington?”
“My love of adventure, I suppose. And Mr. Sickles’s kind invitation. I saw him, by chance, at Mr. Bennett’s …”
“Of the New York Herald?”
“The same. We are old friends, Mr. Bennett and I. Anyway, Mr. Sickles said, Come back to Washington and get a front seat to watch the war. So I did. I’m at the Kirkwood, looking out the window with my spyglass for signs of la réforme and Lamartine. Not,” he added quickly, “that Mr. Lincoln is another Louis Philippe. Quite the contrary.”
“You were in Paris during 1848?” Hay was awed.
“Oh, yes. I was a secret agent for the British, engaged by Lord Palmerston himself. You will find a chapter devoted to me in Charles Schermerhorn Schuyler’s The Barricades of 1848. A superb history, as you know. Mr. Schuyler, who lives in Paris … But all that is yesterday. This”—Wikoff gestured toward Lincoln’s back, which was turned their way—“is the adventure now.”
“I suppose it is.” But Hay was unable to find any trace of high romance in the grim events that had overtaken the American republic. Madam joined them.
“As I keep warning you, Chevalier, this is not the court of France.” Mary smiled up at Wikoff, who bowed low.
“I would not trade our Republican queen,” he said, “for two empresses of the French.”
“Vous êtes tellement charmant, Chevalier. Mais, l’on dit, l’Impératrice Eugénie est si belle que tous les hommes …”
Hay was surprised that Madam’s French was both fluent and reasonably unaccented. He himself had learned German
as a boy from the Germans in Warsaw, Illinois, and French at school. He was as enchanted as Madam by the Chevalier’s tales of the French and Spanish courts, as well as by the long and curious account of the fifteen months that Wikoff had spent in a Genoese prison; put there, the Chevalier was convinced, by British duplicity. Like Madam, Hay only knew of the European world from books, while Wikoff had managed to live at least one book’s contents in Europe, which he proceeded to present to the Republican Queen, who was rapidly developing a taste for flattery on the grand scale, now ecstatically fulfilled by Senator Sumner, whose French was the most elegant of all and who knew even more of the Europe’s great figures than did the Chevalier himself. But Hay was quick to note that Sumner did not quite approve of so much traffic with royalty and so little with the world of the mind. Where the Chevalier would deal, as it were, with the Empress Eugénie, Sumner would deal with Victor Hugo and Lamartine. Mary was now aflame with delight; she quoted Victor Hugo at incorrect length, allowing Sumner to win the exchange.
Hay was almost relieved to be taken away from the French corner by plain Cousin Lizzie, who said, “I wish you’d talk to Cousin Lincoln about sending the family North.”
“The family won’t go, Mrs. Grimsley. You’ve heard Madam … I mean Mrs. Lincoln.” Hay stammered; the nicknames were only for Nicolay and himself. Fortunately, Cousin Lizzie thought he was referring to the fire-work’s display of French beneath the portrait of Mrs. Monroe. “Oh, Cousin Mary can jabber for hours in French. She went to this French academy in Lexington, run by two marvelous old things called Mentelle. Then she was given these special lessons by this old retired Episcopal bishop, who thought her smart as paint, which she is.” An usher served them fashionable French cakes—to go, Hay thought, with the conversation as well as the tea. A large woman, who liked her food, Mrs. Grimsley had become noticeably larger during her extended stay in the Mansion. “Cousin Mary has the courage of a lion, I must say, and won’t leave if there is any danger. But I tell her, you have the two small boys! What happens to them when the rebels attack the city?”
“We hope that won’t happen,” said Hay, who was reasonably certain that if the rebels did not attack before the arrival of the northern regiments in the next few days, the city was safe. But he tended to agree with the President that if he were the rebel general, he would attack as soon as possible—immediately, in fact; because, despite General Scott’s official optimism, the only part of the city that could be held for any length of time was the White House and its neighbor the massive stone Treasury Building, where howitzers had been placed in the corridors and grain stored in the cellars. Preparations for a siege had begun.
“Well, I would appreciate it if you were to put a word in Cousin Lincoln’s ear. At least send the children North.”
“How?” Hay rather enjoyed alarming Mrs. Grimsley.
“Well, by the cars, I suppose.”
“There are no trains to the North. There are no ships available because of our blockade.”
Mrs. Grimsley’s mouth twitched involuntarily. Then she laughed. “The roads South are open, aren’t they?”
“Oh, yes. There are even boats still, in spite of the blockade.”
“Then the boys can be sent to Lexington. Kentucky’s certain to stay in the Union.”
“Mr. Lincoln got only two votes in Lexington. The rest voted for Breckinridge.”
“Cousin Mary and I are still trying to guess who the two were. We think one was her oldest half-brother … Oh, Ben Helm has agreed to come pay a call.” Hay’s blank look inspired Cousin Lizzie to a genealogical flight. “He’s the husband of Little Sister, that’s Cousin Mary’s half-sister Emilie, whom she adores. Anyway, Emilie married Ben Hardin Helm, who graduated from West Point, and Cousin Mary has been doing her best to get them to come here and accept a commission in the Union army. Anyway, we just got word from a Kentucky friend, who arrived at Willard’s Thursday, that the Helmses are on their way!”
“To accept a commission?” Hay had heard a great deal about Madam’s secessionist family, particularly her three half-brothers and her three half-sisters who still lived at the South, many of them in Lexington, under the vigilant matriarchy of Mrs. Lincoln’s stepmother.
Mrs. Grimsley helped herself to another of Gautier’s confections. “Yes, I believe so. For Cousin Mary, I pray so. It’s embarrassing for the President, for one thing.” She looked at Hay, as if she wanted him to say that it was not; but he did not. She went on, jaws grinding evenly. “And it is heartbreaking for her to have all those brothers and sisters so much younger than she, the ones that she looked on as if they were her own babies, at war with her.”
“I can think of nothing more tragic,” said Hay, honestly.
“Once Little Sister and Ben are here, I’m sure that things will be better. Anyway, I can’t stay forever. Cousin Mary’s threatening to go to New York some time next month, to do some shopping for this”—Mrs. Grimsley looked around the shabby but unmistakably, despite the marks of greasy hands and tobacco spit, Blue Room—“depressing old house.” She lowered her voice. “I wouldn’t live here if I was paid a fortune! We’ve better places, let me tell you, in Kentucky, let alone Virginia. Anyway, once we’re in New York, I’ll try to take the cars for Springfield.” Mrs. Grimsley looked across the room at the glowing Mary, still talking French. “I fear for her in this place.”
“Because of the rebels?”
“Oh, no. She’s a Todd. She can handle an invading army just fine. No, it’s these terrible Washington ladies, who have no manners. But then, as her stepmother Mrs. Todd says, it takes seven generations to make a lady. Most of the women here are at the first jump.”
“Ready to be thrown?” Hay could not resist elaborating on this dangerous hunting metaphor.
Mrs. Grimsley chose, after seven generations, to let Hay’s rhetorical question go unanswered. “She also suffers from the vicious press that has no mercy—not to mention an endless talent for invention.”
“Mr. Lincoln has pretty much stopped reading Northern newspapers. He says that since they are filled with nothing but speculations about him, he’d be no wiser.”
“I wish she’d be as wise. But she reads the worst things about herself and the President and takes them so to heart. She needs friends in this place. You’re too young to remember the Coterie …”
“But I know all of you now.”
“But we’re all of us old now. While then we were young, and Cousin Mary was the center of everything, the wittiest and most charming of the lot and, tell this to no one except Mr. Nicolay, she is a devastating mimic. Last night she had us in stitches, imitating a certain proud young lady.”
“Miss Chase?” Hay let the name slip.
“I never said the name, Mr. Hay.”
The Blue Room was suddenly made clamorous by the entrance of Willie and Tad, accompanied by Elizabeth Keckley, who spent most of every day at the Mansion, helping Mrs. Lincoln with the renovation of the house, with the children, with the entrenched bureaucracy that ruled the White House inside and out. Both Hay and Nicolay suspected vast corruption on the part of the head groundsman, whose bills were astonishing; and minor corruption on the part of Old Edward, of the housekeeper and of the chief cook. Madam had also asked for her own secretary, to be paid for by the Commissioner of Public Buildings a dignitary whom she had personally selected even though he was a friend of Mr. Seward.
While the delighted parents watched as Willie and Tad annoyed everyone with their antics, Hay asked the President if he might withdraw.
“Yes, Mr. Hay. Yes.” When Lincoln was distracted, he always called him Mr. Hay; in normal temper, he called him John. What, Hay wondered, had Sumner been telling him?
Later that night, as Hay sat at the desk in his bedroom, and Nicolay snored in their common bed, Lincoln appeared in the doorway, wearing an overcoat, slippers, and no trousers. Hay got to his feet. But Lincoln gestured for him to sit down. Then the President sat on the edge of the bed, and crossed his lo
ng, thin legs; and asked, “Are you keeping a journal?”
Hay nodded; and blushed, as if caught in some shameful act.
“Well, there should be a lot to write about, worse luck for me. Anyway, tomorrow I want you to go over to the Library of Congress and see what you can find on the President’s wartime powers.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Because,” the Ancient sighed, “Mr. Sumner thinks that in the event of civil war, which this certainly is, I can free the slaves as ‘a military necessity.’ ”
“Would you, sir?”
“Well, Mr. Sumner would,” said the President.
FOURTEEN
FOR HAY, the next few days were curiously tranquil. The city was empty. The horsecars ran at whim. The troops were silent as they stood guard at the public buildings, waiting for the enemy and a battle that the Union would surely lose; or for the reinforcements that did not come even though thousands of Union troops were only forty miles to the north in Maryland.
The day that General Scott had promised Lincoln the Eighth Massachusetts Regiment, Tuesday, came and went much like troopless Monday. Tuesday afternoon when Hay entered the President’s office to tell him that Mr. Seward wanted to see him, he found Lincoln standing once again at the open window; he was looking out across the odiferous marshes to the jumbled blocks that surrounded the unfinished shaft of Washington’s monument, which he was now addressing, urgently, “Why don’t they come? Why don’t they come?”
Hay coughed. Lincoln turned; lips still moving but, now, soundlessly. “Mr. Seward, sir. He has a message from the governor of Maryland.”