1876

by Gore Vidal

  “But we do say ‘sir’ in England. To royalty.” I was benign.

  Tears came to McAllister’s eyes. “Some years ago, just as I was being presented to the Prince of Wales, the very instant he heard the ‘Mac’ part of my name, he turned away.”

  I consoled McAllister as best I could until the evening ended at the mystical and roseate hour of midnight.

  In the garnet drawing room Mrs. Astor stood, dark and commanding. As her guests filed past, they touched her hand as though it were an idol’s, and certain to bring good luck.

  I received the touch; so did Emma. “We hope to see a great deal of you while you are in New York.” The sentence was, as it were, not said but passed.

  McAllister immediately proposed, “The next Patriarchs’ Ball?”

  “Yes.” So Queen Elizabeth might have raised from obscurity to the splendour of an earldom a common border Cecil, or Louis XIV with a nod of his wig bade a courtier to join him in the country at Marly and rich preferment.

  The Sanfords said good-bye to us in the foyer. I find her entirely sympathetic but cannot warm to him. If he would only stick with a single performance, perhaps I could bear him more easily. But the constant shifts from plain-spoken man of the people, all hideously self-made, to thoughtful Darwinist and social historian is rather more than I can take.

  After we got home I said to Emma, “I hadn’t known you joined the Sanfords for lunch.”

  “I should have told you.” Emma was contrite. I was already in my dressing gown before the fire, getting ready to make these notes. Emma was still in her evening gown, still Winterhalter though her face looked grey and tired, and I noted with the eye, I fear, of a realistic writer rather than with the loving gaze of an adoring father that, when tired, the lines on either side of her lower lip become deep and threaten one day to forge dewlaps like her mother’s, like mine.

  “At the last moment I couldn’t face another excursion into Apgar-land and so I telegraphed the Sanfords ‘yes’ having already said ‘no.’ ”

  “Was it amusing?”

  “The Belmonts are easy. Not at all American.” Then Emma spoke analytically of tonight’s guests. I waited for her to get round to Sanford but she did not.

  “I like Mrs. Sanford.” I made my move.

  “So do I.” Emma seemed enthusiastic. The old coals in the grate suddenly fell in upon themselves; a brief rush of flame and Emma’s face was rosy, young again. “But I don’t think she must have an easy time of it.”

  “With him?”

  Emma nodded, staring at the flames; slowly she removed paste rings. “I have the impression he overpowers her. Forces her to do things she would rather not.”

  “Like go to Mrs. Astor’s?”

  “Worse, I should think.”

  “Worse? How?” I was intrigued, but Emma was not in the mood to play our usual game of penetrating the disguises people wear. “A philanderer?” was the most obvious attempt I could make to compel her attention, but Emma only smiled.

  “I shouldn’t think he had that sort of energy.”

  “What an astonishing thing to say! That is an energy few men lack. And Sanford’s not yet forty.”

  “I don’t know, Papa.” Emma shifted to French. “I just said the first thing that came into my head. Perhaps he has a hundred mistresses. I wish him joy.”

  Emma kissed my cheek, I kissed her hand: our old ritual.

  “Did he apologize for the flowers he sent you?”

  “They were never mentioned. The vulgar have their own kind of tact, Papa.” Then she was gone.

  I cannot think why I allow Sanford to disturb me. I suppose it is because he has made it perfectly clear that he means to seduce Emma. Thank God, he has no chance if her mind is made up elsewhere, as I believe it to be in Apgar-land. Also, I suspect that Emma is not by nature amorous. She is too cool, too cautious, too possessed of a sense of the ridiculous ever to let go. I could imagine her turning from a drunken mad husband like Sprague to a man of power like Conkling, but I cannot imagine that she would ever allow herself to become involved with someone like William Sanford, a married man without glory or charm, only money. That would be out of character. Completely out of character. Yet why am I so alarmed? I do not really believe in heredity as much as I do in the ordinary circumstances that shape a life, but there is no doubt that Emma and I have in our veins most curious blood. I am the illegitimate son of Aaron Burr, and though I do not much resemble in appearance or character that elusive, marvellous, amoral man, I do sometimes see, staring at me from beneath Emma’s beautiful level brows, the eyes of Aaron Burr, absolutely intense and entirely resolute—the eyes of a world conqueror. At such moments, she is as strange and magical to me as he was in life, as he is in memory.

  3

  THE GREAT DAY BEGAN with a snowstorm and a telegram from Governor Tilden, asking me to come see him at five o’clock, in order to talk before the dinner party.

  Emma and I studied the message carefully and decided that she was not included at this meeting. “I’ll come on alone for dinner.” There seemed no alternative, since there is no one she could go with except the Bigelows, and they would simply walk around the corner from their own house in Gramercy Park.

  At exactly five o’clock I arrived in Gramercy Park to find the air filled with a fine snow that the north wind with a most un-American fairness was trying to deposit on everything equally. The gas lamps had already been lit (because the Governor was in residence?) and their small pale halos hung in the middle air like so many purgatorial angels.

  A servant showed me into an upstairs study, very much the sort of bookish retreat one would expect a wealthy lawyer with literary tastes to assemble. Seated in front of—that New York rarity—a wood fire (how sick I am of the smell of burning anthracite) was the imposing figure of a man in his fifties with short-cut dark hair and a somewhat belligerent face. As I entered the room he was entirely concentrated on reading a sheaf of papers.

  When my presence was detected, the man sprang to his feet; took my hand in his and slowly crushed it. “I’m Comptroller Green, Mr. Schuyler. The Governor’s resting just now. Will you take tea? Something stronger?”

  Something stronger was brought me. Mr. Green took nothing. “We’re still at work on the Governor’s speech to the legislature next week.” He struck the sheaf of papers with his fist. “This ought to set them on their ear!”

  I did not ask whose ear would be set on, but assumed that he had the Republicans in mind. I drank Scotch whisky; spoke blandly, “Certainly the whole country will be listening to the Governor.”

  “Just what I tell that staff of his! Oh, they are…” But Green decided he did not know me well enough to give me his view of the Governor’s staff.

  “You are the comptroller of—New York City?” A foolish sort of question (though I made it sound a statement), for such men think the whole world knows them.

  Green nodded gloomily. “No doubt for my sins in an earlier life. Last job in the world I wanted. But the Governor insisted. So I am heir to the Tweed debacle.”

  My magpie brain retains from the thousands of lines of newspaper print I feed it each day all sorts of odd useful facts. “Andrew H. Green” appeared in bold black letters behind my eyelids. The Sun. No, the Herald. I proceeded to read aloud from the newspaper in my head, “And of course we all hope that from the comptrollership you, Mr. Green, will become a reforming mayor.” I let the editorial extrude smoothly, as though I had never for a day left Manhattan Island and its affairs.

  Green flushed agreeably. “Well, there’s been talk, but I don’t think an honest comptroller of the city’s finances is apt to be very popular with the bosses in the wards.”

  “Then let us hope you move on with the Governor to Washington.”

  “There is a lot of hoping but nowhere near enough organizing.”

  “Our friend
Bigelow—”

  “Does what he can.” A slight edge to the voice, and I felt at home—at court again. It is all like a dim provincial version of the Tuileries, where grown men and women used to spend their days and nights plotting to arrange, as if by accident, five minutes alone with the Emperor on the stairs, in a garden, anywhere that the imperial quarry might for an instant be snared and used in order to rise in the world.

  Green has been a law partner and intimate of the Governor for, he told me, thirty-three years. “A long time, isn’t it?” Green shook his head at the idea of a century’s third. “I was just a boy of twenty-one when I went into his law office. I thought then that he was the most brilliant man I’d ever met. I still do. He—is like an older brother to me.”

  I was pleasantly surprised that the somewhat chilly—even forbidding—Tilden could instill such ardour in an associate. Tilden is plainly a more complicated man than I first thought those pleasant days in Geneva when I simply saw the precise lawyer, the ruthless politician, the monomaniac—a word I have several times heard people use when referring to him. Certainly, once he has got hold of a subject, he does not easily let it go until he’s shaken all the life from it, like the terrier I saw chew to bits rat after rat the other afternoon in a so-called pit just back of City Hall.

  One of the doors into the study was opened by a tall young man, carrying a small valise. “The Governor’s resting fine, Mr. Green.”

  “Thank you, Ben. You know your way out.”

  “Yes, sir.” The young man nodded politely in my direction, acknowledging the presence of a gentleman whilst emphasizing his own position so much further down the long American social ladder.

  When the lad was gone, Green identified him as “a very good giver of massages. You see, I can’t get the Governor to exercise properly. He likes to ride, but nothing else, and who can ride in this weather? So naturally his blood just accumulates in the veins, which is very unhealthy. I tell him that he should be massaged every day, but I know for a fact that when he’s at Albany he never stirs from his desk. Not that he isn’t in the very best of health for a man of his age,” Green suddenly added, realizing that the condition of a presidential candidate’s body is far more important than the contents, if any, of his mind.

  “Andy!” The familiar, rather feeble voice sounded from the next room. Green excused himself and joined his chief. I looked about the room. Family portraits, law books, a statuary group of a soldier fallen in the late war, head cradled in the lap of a grieving friend. I found myself wondering, idly, where the Governor kept his collection of erotic literature, which I learned about, quite by chance, from a bookseller in London; apparently the Governor has been secretly collecting lurid works for many years. Thus bachelors amuse themselves.

  Green re-entered the room so silently that I started guiltily, as if I had been caught at some indiscretion by examining even in a desultory way the life-like figures created by the celebrated John Rogers. “I gave that to the Governor. If you like, you can go in. He’s resting, of course…”

  A single lamp on a table beside the bed illuminated what at first appeared to be an emaciated corpse—at least the lower part looked wasted away, for Tilden’s legs as outlined beneath the single sheet that covered him are as thin as a crane’s. The rest of him is more in the usual scale. Although a year younger than I, he seems to me to be very much my senior.

  Cautiously I approached the bed, where the Governor lay flat on his back, arms at his sides. The hair is grey and cut almost as short as that of his friend Green. He wears no moustache, beard or side whiskers. If only for this continence, I hope that he becomes the president and sets the nation a new style. Since the war no one has actually been able to get a good look at any American face, so fantastic are the beards and whiskers, in imitation for the most part of General Grant.

  In the half-light of a single kerosene lamp, Tilden looked to be all grey like a corpse. Later in the full light at dinner, his face proved to be almost as grey and corpse-like as when I found myself staring down at the sheeted figure, at the pale face with the large nose and curiously arched upper lip (dentures that do not fit?).

  Then the eyes opened. I should like to report that the effect was as electrifying as, Paris friends assure me, that of the first Napoleon when suddenly he gazed upon friend or foe. But such was not the case with Governor Tilden. Rather, it was as if two large round grey clams had, of their own accord, opened and looked up at me, as from the half-shell. Were I holding a lemon, I might have squeezed it.

  “Mr. Schuyler.” The voice was faint. “Please draw up a chair. And forgive me for receiving you like this. You are very good to put up with me.”

  “Not at all.” I made cheerful sounds as I placed a chair beside the bed. The Governor again shut his eyes. The lids are prominent and, even when raised, give a secret, hooded look to the dull grey eyes. I noted a slight droop to the left eyelid, the result of the mild stroke he suffered last February (and, to date, kept hidden from the public). I sat down, feeling a bit absurd, like a doctor at the wrong deathbed. For a moment there was no sound in the room but the regular soft belching of the Governor. He is a martyr to dyspepsia, and massage seems not to help the stomach’s tension.

  “And what, Mr. Schuyler, is your view of the order of the Grey Nuns?”

  “Most benevolent.” I improvised until I realized what he was talking about. Apparently, the Governor had signed a bill allowing the nuns to teach in the common schools. As a result, there is much Catholic-baiting going on. The Tribune is up in arms and the Evening Post wants the law repealed at the next session of the legislature.

  “I must decide what position to take before next week. It is most perplexing. Much of our Democratic support is Catholic. But then there are all those Baptists and Presbyterians in the party, too. Such a noise they make…” Tilden sighed.

  The hatred of the Catholics is still very strong in the city, particularly in such liberal circles as Harper’s Weekly, where the celebrated cartoonist Thomas Nast, himself a German-born immigrant, wages a constant war on the papacy.

  “When in doubt take no position.” I was wise.

  “I am neither in doubt, nor have I neglected to take a position.” This was unexpectedly sharp, even presidential.

  My pulse beat faster as I realized that I must not through inadvertent attempts at wit seal up the future fount of honour. “If the legislature originated the bill,” I said quickly, “let them take the responsibility for it.”

  “Spoken like a lawyer.” A slight raising of the awning-like upper lip served its owner well enough for a smile. “I must tell you, Mr. Schuyler, that I have read with care your reports on Europe and they are masterful in their detail. You have made me think new thoughts about the relationship between France and Prussia.”

  “You flatter me…”

  A series, or glissade, of tiny belches interrupted us. Tilden is so used to them that he does not seem aware when they occur. When they ceased, he observed, “Bigelow is such a Prussian, you know.”

  “We have argued about that.” I took my stand. “I find altogether too great a tendency here to admire the efficiency of the Germans at the expense of, let us say, the humanity and the creativity of the French.”

  “Yes. I have read you.” Tilden was dry. Like me, he does not enjoy being told things that he already knows. “I also need your views to counterbalance Bigelow. He is convinced that in the next century there will be only three great powers—Germany, Russia and the United States.”

  “I lack the gift of prophecy, Governor. But in this century I am at your service now and—later.” That was as close as I dared come to a request.

  “Should there be a ‘later,’ I would certainly not let such a mind as yours go unused.”

  There it was—as good as in writing. No, better! For a lawyer as subtle as Tilden can never make a written agreement without arranging for himself, amo
ngst the qualifying clauses, an escape hatch. The spoken word of a politician is almost always more reliable than his written bond.

  We spoke a bit more of foreign affairs. I told him then of my assignment for the Herald.

  “Not a favourite newspaper.” The grey lip curled back: grey teeth shone dully. “But powerful.”

  “I could, I think, be of some use to the party. Not so much in what I write about General Grant, who seems already retired, but more particularly about his heirs, and your future rival.”

  “Blaine.” The word was said softly, without emphasis.

  “Conkling?”

  The grey head rolled from side to side—at first, to indicate a negative, but then, finding pleasure in that rocking motion, in the easing of the muscles of the neck, the rolling continued. “I think Conkling will be no problem for us. Blaine is something else. Fortunately, he is corrupt.”

  “Does the public care?”

  “I can make them care as I have made them care twice before.” The feeble voice was at curious odds with the Caesarean statement. “No, Mr. Schuyler, we need fear only the good, the honest man, like Mr. Bristow at the Treasury. But such a man will never be chosen by the Republican party. Never. So—Blaine.”

  In the dim light I detected the makings of a most decent small-scale smile.

  Green and a manservant entered. “Time to dress, Governor. The guests will be coming any minute. The Bigelows are already here.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Schuyler.” Tilden’s hand took mine for a moment and pressed it—a relatively strong grip, I noted. “You are the sort of man we need in public life. One who is able to limit theory by practice”—there was a slight strangled sound as he held back a larger than ordinary belch—“yet enlighten practice by theory.” On that high note, I joined the Bigelows in the main drawing room.

  All in all, a successful evening. Emma worked hard on my behalf. She sat on Tilden’s right at dinner and I think she managed to charm him, if any one can. There were a half-dozen Tilden relatives present, enjoying Christmas Eve with the family’s richest and most famous member.