1876

by Gore Vidal

  Fifty ladies and gentlemen had been invited for this particular dinner party, Ward McAllister whispered in my ear, breath more foul with the violets that he’d been eating than the usual odour of port he wanted to disguise. “All New York that matters is under this roof tonight.”

  The Mystic Rose gave Emma a long look; then the eyes went straight to the replicas of the D’Agrigente diamonds. I feared for a moment that Mrs. Astor would suddenly produce not a lorgnette but a jeweller’s magnifying glass, detect Emma’s paste and order us to the door.

  But Emma passed with colours that flew before the wind of our hostess’s approbation like so many banners in a victory parade. “We’ve heard so much about you, Princess. We’re so glad you could be with us tonight.”

  “You are most kind, Madame, to invite us.” Emma’s French accent was quite—deliberately?—noticeable.

  “Mr. Schermerhorn Schuyler.” Mrs. Astor allowed me to bow over her rather thick beringed fingers. “Mr. McAllister is confident that you and I are cousins. You see, I was born a Schermerhorn.” The tone of her voice was reverent, as if she had been born a Plantagenet.

  I deeply dislike McAllister’s doubling of my name. In his ambition for us socially, he has managed to impose upon me a false persona, for I am connected with neither the grand Schermerhorns nor the grand Schuylers. My Schermerhorn mother was born on a poor upstate farm, one of eleven undistinguished children, all of whom had the misfortune to live while my father Schuyler kept a tavern in Greenwich Village—in those days a real village and not just a name to denote a part of this never-ending city.

  But I am willing to play whatever game is expected; and was complaisant. “Yes, my mother was a Schermerhorn, too. From Columbia County.” All perfectly true. “Their place was near Claverack.” Again perfectly honest.

  “Ours is indeed a large family.” Mrs. Astor gave me a gracious nod as if she were Queen Victoria and I one of a thousand German princely cousins to be suitably recognized.

  Then we passed into the next drawing room, where everything was blue-green damask and rich malachite. McAllister remained beside his Rose, introducing her to people she for the most part appeared to know better than he, but then that is the task of the chamberlain in a royal household.

  Emma caused some stir. Everyone knew of her. Several ladies had met her at one or another of Mrs. Mary Mason Jones’s lunch parties, so she was well provided for with respectable companions of her own sex. The men eyed her most appreciatively—red-faced fat men, with eyes glazed from too many razzle-dazzles. Proudly they bear the great names of the New York that so bore me. But I am a beggar; may not choose.

  “You have not been polite!” A woman’s voice behind me. I turned and there was Mrs. William Sanford, as bright and cheerful as ever.

  “How have I failed you?”

  “You wouldn’t join us for lunch at the Brunswick—”

  “I was indisposed. No, really. Felled by Delmonico’s splendid food—”

  “—so the Princess said, but I thought you’d really dropped us.”

  We kept on in this vein. I was startled: Emma had not told me that she had accepted the Sanfords’ invitation on the second day of my convalescence. I had been under the impression that she had retired, as usual, into Apgar-land.

  “We had a charming time. I hope she did. The Belmonts were there and they took to her enormously, but then everyone does.”

  That explained the mysterious invitation from Mrs. August Belmont for dinner New Year’s Eve. “I’ve not met them,” I said to Emma when I saw the invitation.

  “But I have,” she said. “It’s all right. They are charming. He’s from our side of the Atlantic.” Belmont—“the beautiful mountain”—was born with that name, but in German. As a Jew he occupies a somewhat equivocal place in the New York scheme of things. He is, however, a great magnate, for he represents the Rothschilds in America and since he possesses what McAllister calls true “tong,” his palace and its entertainments almost rival those of the Mystic Rose.

  “But Caroline won’t have the Belmonts here. So narrow, I think.” Mrs. Sanford was actually criticizing our hostess. I liked her more and more.

  “But then I suppose she wants to draw the line somewhere,” I said.

  “Yes. And what she’s done is to draw the outer perimeter so as to contain the largest possible circle of bores that will fit comfortably into her dining room.” This was a most unexpected announcement.

  “Really, Mrs. Sanford, I think you are a revolutionary.”

  “You’ll be one, too, if you stay too long in this city, revolving and revolving in the same orbit. Look at the gentlemen, will you!”

  I said that I had already noticed them.

  “Half drunk already. They leave their offices, drop in at the Hoffman bar or at their club, have a drink or two, come home, drink some more, quarrel with their wives. Then—well, here they are, thinking of food and drink like buffaloes heading for the watering hole.”

  “Surely Mr. Sanford does not qualify as a—buffalo.”

  I detected something odd in her manner, a slight turning away; the merriment ceased. “No, no. Bill is usually most abstemious. But he does love to go out, and I don’t.”

  “Even now?”

  “You are like a fresh Atlantic breeze in this hothouse, Mr. Schuyler.”

  I was perfectly flattered, and responded in kind until dinner was announced.

  Ward McAllister, in loco Astoris, took in Emma first. I came in last with Mrs. Astor on my arm (McAllister had earlier sent me full verbal instructions as to protocol via the stately butler).

  “Where is Mr. Astor?” I asked as the majestic figure beside me set the pace for our slow walk to the long dining room.

  “In Florida.” She said the name of the state as though it were something very strange and not quite nice. “He takes the boat. He has horses there. Do you like horses, Mr. Schermerhorn Schuyler?”

  I did my best with that one. In fact, I did my best through the long luxurious dinner, for I was on Mrs. Astor’s right—taking precedence as a sort of foreigner.

  The motif of the dining room was of the purest, heaviest, most expensively wrought gold. Candelabra, epergnes, serving plates, all was gold, even the roses (mystical?) that decorated the table had a gold look to them.

  But one works hard to sit in that high place, to eat that superb dinner. Conversation with Mrs. Astor is not easy, for she is swift to exclude whole subjects. As usual, I did not mention literature. That is for others to do if they are so minded. She was not so minded. She did not, she felt obliged to say, find much worth reading nowadays. But, graciously, she admitted to enjoying the illustrations to my article on the Empress Eugénie. On music she is better. She has seen and sometimes heard the second act of all the great operas. Painting and sculpture? No response except to praise her own things.

  I moved boldly to grave matters. I told her that I was soon to go to Washington City. I would be dealing with the President. My hope of impressing her was stopped dead with an absolute exclusion. “I have never been to Washington myself.”

  “But why should you leave right here?” I babbled, implying, idiotically, that she remain forever seated at her own dinner table, while footmen filled golden goblets with Château Margaux.

  “I go to Ferncliff.” This was an announcement. It is the name of the house that her husband has built up the Hudson at Rhine-beck. “I also go to Newport. I have a cottage there. You and the Princess must visit us. One goes first by the cars to Boston. Then one changes to the cars of the Fall River line.”

  That, I think, gives the flavour of our conversation. At one point she did press me hard on the Schermerhorn connection; happily, I was able, without once lying, to convince her that we were indeed cousins.

  Since the dinner lasted three hours, I feel now that I know Mrs. Astor as well as I shall ever want to. Alternate
courses were a relief because I had Mrs. Sanford to my right. She knew exactly what I was going through without once making any reference to our hostess. I must say (as a result of the contrast?) she seems to me now a sort of angel of good sense and kindness; also, swift, oh, very swift to get the point to things. She is remarkably like Emma in that regard.

  At about eleven Mrs. Astor rose from her place—in the middle of a sentence to me on the difficulties of finding footmen who would not drink up what was left in the bottles. With a marvellous silken, whispery, jingling sound, the ladies followed Mrs. Astor to the vast art gallery that runs parallel to the dining room. In the dining room the gentlemen huddled together, testing the port, the madeira.

  I found myself joined on the one side by the solicitous McAllister: “She was enchanted by you. I can tell our Rose’s every mood.”

  And on my other side was William Sanford, looking more glamourous than ever, and already breathing cigar smoke. “So how’s the old tin oven, Mr. Schuyler?” This was meant to be jovial.

  I responded with all the pomp of Mrs. Astor. “If I had a tin oven, Mr. Sanford, I would hope that it worked properly.”

  “You must pardon an old railroad man. That’s one of our expressions.” He went on for a while, spinning yet another identity for himself—a sort of diamond in the rough Commodore Vanderbilt type, straight-talking and mean as a snake. I found him tiring in this vein; happily, he is not slow to see what effect he is making and so changed entirely his manner.

  “We enjoyed the Princess’s company at lunch. As did the Belmonts.”

  “So Mrs. Sanford told me.” I was deliberately flat; do not really care to encourage this peculiar acquaintance.

  “I hope the Princess was amused.”

  “She has said nothing to me about what must have been something of a gala.”

  “Yes.” The grey eyes were very round now; and calculating—what? How to win me? But I am hardly worth the effort. “We hope that you both will visit us at Newport, Rhode Island, in June.”

  “June is a long time away. Besides,” I added, inspired, “we’re committed to Mrs. Astor.”

  “Beechwood’s uncomfortable.”

  I gathered that this was the name of the Astor cottage. “Besides I may have to be at the nominating conventions. Emma is eager to see St. Louis and Cincinnati, not to mention the god Demos in action.” If Sanford believed a word of this, he would, as they say here, believe anything. But I laid it on.

  “Of course.” Sanford was mild. “Conkling’s the man, you know.”

  “To be nominated for president?”

  Sanford nodded, slowly, deliberately, as if he himself were kingmaker. “It’s all been arranged by the Stalwarts, and in spite of all your reformers like Bristow and Schurz, Tom Murphy and Chet Arthur will decide who gets nominated. Of course there’ll be a row.”

  “Is it true that General Grant would like a third term?”

  “Mrs. Grant would dearly like it and I suppose he would, too. But this Babcock thing…” Sanford shook his head, affecting sadness. “Not to mention the constant fussing of your reformers, going on and on about Civil Service reform, like crazy fools.”

  I agreed that it was foolish to want to reform the Civil Service when it is plainly not possible under the present party system which requires that the incoming political party replace everyone in the departments of the government with their own supporters who are, to a man, every bit as undeserving and as unqualified as those whose places they have usurped. This has been going on all my life. Lately, examinations have been given to would-be government workers with, predictably, farcical results. Much quoted in the town is the reply of one of Collector Arthur’s pets to the examiner’s question, “By what process is a statute of the United States enacted?” To which the good Republican answered, “Never saw one erected and don’t know the process.”

  “You have not met Senator Conkling, have you?”

  I said that I had met him briefly last summer.

  “An impressive man, a superb orator, vain as can be, of course. The ladies think the world of him.”

  “Yes. Particularly our friend Mrs. Sprague.”

  A look of interest was bestowed on me like a prize for deportment. “Well, now, you don’t say?”

  “So I do say. Mrs. Sprague has been living in Paris, you know. She has an apartment near the Madeleine, in the Rue Duphot.” I piled on the details.

  “An uncommonly handsome woman.”

  “She is indeed.”

  “I guess Kate Chase Sprague is the closest thing to a queen we’ve ever had in this country.” Sanford lowered his voice. “Mustn’t let McAllister hear me say that or he’ll push one of the Mystic Rose’s thorns my way. But Mrs. Astor is just New York, while Kate was queen of Washington, of politics, right until ’73. Then it was all over. Funny thing. I warned Sprague that the Panic was on its way, but there was no talking to that man. There never is. When he’s not drunk—which is rare—he’s just plain eccentric. Of the two, Kate has the brains.”

  “But apparently those brains are now at the service of Senator Conkling and not of Senator Sprague.” The most talked-of Washington liaison is that between Roscoe Conkling, the beautiful senator from New York and master of his state’s Republican party and Kate Chase Sprague, the beautiful daughter of the rather plain late Chief Justice and would-be president Salmon P. Chase, as well as wretched wife to the mad little senator from Rhode Island, William Sprague. Emma sees a good deal of Kate at Paris; finds her deeply embittered, resenting an exile not unlike that of our Empress but at least Kate has the good luck to be at Paris rather than at Chislehurst. Of all the Americans who have come our way in France, Emma took most to Kate, as she calls her, and I must say that despite the gloomy setting in the Rue Duphot the woman does have the curious gleam one notices in those who have been not only at a world’s centre but for a time the focal point of that world’s interest.

  Kate has been in Paris for almost two years now; separated from her husband by an ocean—and a thousand bottles; from her lover Conkling by the force of society, not to mention that young man’s ambition, for he is, as Sanford says, a contender for the presidency next year.

  Sudden thought: This puts me in a curious dilemma. Should Conkling be the candidate and should I be at work for Tilden, what then ought my attitude be when the scandal of Kate and Conkling becomes a part of the ever-dingy electoral process? I shall have no attitude—and hope that the Republicans nominate Conkling’s vigorous enemy the Speaker of the House of Representatives James G. Blaine.

  Certainly I shall keep to myself the fact that by accident last summer, I met Senator Conkling at Mrs. Sprague’s apartment. He was standing in the front doorway just before teatime, saying good-bye to her. She made the presentations in such a hurried, flustered way that had I not recognized from newspaper cartoons the tall, rather stout Adonis of Republican politics, I might have thought her caller some sort of overdressed professional man, like the Empress’s friend and dentist Dr. Evans.

  “It is a fascinating game.” Sanford puffed on his cigar. “I think about it sometimes for myself.”

  “Politics?”

  “Yes. If you have the money and the feel of the thing, why, it’s as simple as can be. It would take me maybe two hundred thousand dollars to buy a seat in the Senate. Conkling paid a bit more for his seat but then New York’s more prosperous than Rhode Island.”

  “But why would you want it? After all, don’t men go to the Senate in order to acquire the sort of money that you already have?”

  Sanford laughed. “Good point! I suppose it’s to see if you can get the top prize. Become the president. After all, that’s worth having for itself, isn’t it?”

  “I can’t think why. As far as I can tell, our presidents have almost no function, except perhaps in wartime.”

  “But they are there! Don’t you see? Now, when
you worry about corruption—”

  “Mr. Sanford, I promise you that I have not lost a moment’s sleep at the thought of a bribe given or received.”

  “Sir, I know your writing. I know who your friends are. You’re shocked by all this. But how else can you run a country where half the people don’t even speak English and everybody’s in a scramble to get his share of the pie? I’ll tell you something,” he told me. “Personally, I’m like you. I don’t like anything about this so-called democracy. I’d like a well-run country with honest people in the government, the way they have in Prussia…”

  “A tyranny?”

  “If that’s the only way to clean things up, make things run right, well, I’d accept that.”

  “With yourself as the tyrant, naturally.”

  “Oh, I’d accept that in a flash!” He laughed to show that he was not joking.

  “Mrs. Sprague has true ‘tong.’”My other ear was duly filled with the sound of McAllister’s voice; he had heard a magical name and responded in character. “Whenever I hear New Yorkers say there is no society at Washington, I say, why, you have never been to Mrs. Sprague’s for New Year’s Day nor seen her enter a room, any room, with her hair done in braids like a coronet, and those marvellous jewels. Gone now, I should think. They are flat broke, don’t you know? the Spragues.”

  This last item was added as if it were a charming detail of the poor woman’s regalia.

  McAllister then gave me a recipe for terrapin, “taught me by a Maryland darkey,” involving a good deal of cream and butter. He also asked me if I had noticed how Americans of the same class say “sir” to one another whereas in England only servants say “sir.”