1876

by Gore Vidal

  “Good,” I whispered back; we are like two conspirators. Now that she stands poised at the edge of Apgar-land, I want her with me as long as possible. To the end, I nearly wrote; have written.

  Five

  1

  SHORTLY AFTER DAWN the hotel’s carriage took us across town to the North River and then down to the Cortland Street ferry, where we embarked for Jersey City and the Pennsylvania Railroad Depot. During the ferry trip, we stayed in our carriage and watched through misty windows the shoreline of New York City become miniature.

  “I used to live just there. See? That big building. Near the wharf.” The building was—and still is—the Washington Market. I once lived nearby, with a girl long dead.

  It is odd, in a way, that Emma should know almost nothing of my life before I met her mother. When she was young, she used to be curious about America but I told her so many made-up stories about Indians and suchlike that she took them for a kind of truth, and to this day regards my life during the twenties and thirties as, literally, fabulous. She also was brought up to regard me as something of an exotic. Early on, Princess Mathilde dubbed me the Blond Indian, and the name stuck. Most impressed, Emma would tell her school friends that her father was an authentic American Indian, from a fair-haired tribe.

  The cars for Washington were luxurious; and we left on time. I was not prepared, however, for the amount of commerce that goes on. First, one is tempted by a doughnut salesman. Then a small boy appears with a large pile of magazines and cheap novels as well as bags of peanuts. Without a word, the boy shoved a ladies’ magazine onto Emma’s lap and a novel about the Wild West onto mine. Then he disappeared.

  “Is this a present?” Emma was astonished.

  “I doubt it.”

  When the cars pulled out of the station, we were still in possession of our unpaid-for reading matter. Meanwhile we were tempted by a fried-oyster salesman in a white coat; only a stern look from Emma kept me from devouring my favourite food, the only American dish that in France I used to dream of and could never find a cook able to approximate that marvellous mixture of Atlantic sea-taste and old lard.

  The car was more comfortable than any European car, with curtains of green plush, stuffed chairs that turn this way and that, gas lamps in good cut glass, mahogany wood fittings, and, all-pervading, the smell of burning fuel mixed with that of fried oysters.

  After a leisurely lunch in the restaurant car, we returned to find the young book salesman standing beside our seats. One hand pointed to the discarded novel, magazine; the other was extended to be paid. “That’ll be one dollar and two bits, sir, for the two.”

  The subsequent battle was finally joined by the conductor, who gave the young entrepreneur a sudden kick in the shins just as I was giving him “two bits” for what he had, finally, minimally, insisted was “an out-and-out rental of my publications.” With a cry of pain and triumph, he was gone.

  “They always get on the cars, sir.” The conductor spoke as of dust, flies. “There’s nothing we can do.”

  As the locomotives were being changed at Baltimore we got off the car and strolled along the siding. Suddenly I heard a sound above me. I looked up and saw a dozen tramps at their ease on top of our car.

  Aware of my gaze, one of them swung down onto the siding with a monkey’s agility. “Ma’am.” He approached Emma who was nearest him. Leering, he held out a dirty hand. “Won’t you give a bit for a poor old veteran?”

  Before either of us could respond, a second and a third and a fourth tramp joined their colleague. Grimacing and grasping and hideous with soot from the locomotive, they formed a menacing circle about us. I raised my stick, and Emma screamed.

  In a moment two armed railroad guards appeared on the run from the nearby depot, and the tramps disappeared amongst the cars and warehouses.

  This most alarming experience was made even more alarming by the conductor, who said matter-of-factly, “Nothing you can do about ’em. Soon as we’re out of the depot, they’ll hop right back on again. And if you’re fool enough to get anywheres near them, why, they’ll throw you right off the train.”

  Interesting and sinister note: as far as I could tell, not one of the tramps was an immigrant. All looked to be of the old American stock, wounded or debauched or both in the war, and ruined by the Panic.

  Thirty years ago I would never have dreamed that there would be such a vast floating criminal class in this country, or so much grinding poverty in grisly contrast to the awful richness of the sort of people we have been seeing at New York. I pity Tilden. For all his intelligence and ambition, I doubt if he has the capacity or the will to do anything about those sooty figures which like monsters in a nightmare suddenly appear and re-appear when least expected, to remind us of the pit. Emma is still shaken, and so am I.

  We arrived at Washington City in the late afternoon of what appeared, unexpectedly, to be a spring day. Though it is mid-February, the south wind was warm and languorous and the gardens and vacant lots were bright with premature spring flowers, with daffodil, narcissus, hyacinth.

  In front of the Pennsylvania Station there was a long line of dilapidated hackney cabs, each in the charge of a Negro driver. Since I have always had difficulty understanding Southerners, it was Emma who finally made the arrangements for transporting us to Willard’s Hotel.

  “Why have you never told me about this city? It is a city, isn’t it?”

  We had just entered Pennsylvania Avenue and Emma was looking about her with absolute curiosity, and some surprise.

  “I was only here once. For two days in 1836. So I don’t remember much except that there was not much to remember. Now at least they’ve put up a city.”

  “Where?”

  “To our left and right. A great world capital.” I waved grandiloquently at the boarding houses and bars, restaurants and hotels that line Pennsylvania Avenue, only recently paved, the driver told us, with asphalt. The dingy red-brick and white frame buildings to our left and right look even smaller than they are because of the enormous width of the avenue that extends from the Capitol to the White House—or used to.

  Since my last visit the direction of the avenue has been changed; it now goes in a straight line from the Capitol to the Treasury Building, and then veers off sharply to the right for a block or two when it turns to the left, dividing in half the original front lawn of the White House. The section of lawn separated from the White House by this new extension of Pennsylvania Avenue is now known as Lafayette Park, at whose center stands not a statue of Lafayette—that would be too logical—but one of Andrew Jackson, astride his horse.

  I was pleased to see that the Capitol is at last finished. “It used to have a very disagreeable-looking temporary dome…brown, I think it was.”

  “A good building.” Emma gave the Capitol her imprimatur. “But there is nothing really to go with it, is there?” She indicated Pennsylvania Avenue. “I mean, this won’t do at all.”

  We were now at Sixth Street, just opposite the Metropolitan Hotel, a somewhat seedy revision of the famous old Indian Queen Hotel, where I once stayed in the high heat of a Washington summer, retching most of the night from having eaten too much of a sumptuous dinner at Andrew Jackson’s White House, my one and only visit to that center of so many of our countrymen’s dreams.

  “And look at all the black people!”

  “The Negroes have always been a majority here. Certainly, they do ail the work.”

  “We are in Africa! And it’s marvellous. But why did no one warn us?”

  I suspect that Emma is more right than she knows, for Washington City is a curiously tropical, colonial-seeming place. Certainly, one senses a native life going on beneath the surface quite separate from that of the white visitors—a category which includes not only the transient members of the government but those native whites who are proudly known as Antiques—and bear the sa
me relation to the political transients as those old New Yorkers who live below Madison Square bear to the flashy folk who live above.

  Willard’s Hotel occupies the corner where Pennsylvania Avenue turns right at the Treasury, a neoclassical building that put Emma in mind of the Church of the Madeleine at Paris. “And equally charmless.”

  Willard’s Hotel is a six-storey building. Rather plain on the outside, the interior is elaborately decorated in that quaint American version of our Second Empire décor which many find vulgar, though, personally, I rather like the crowded, gilded, Gothic glitter of so many American houses and public places.

  As we stepped beneath the marquee, amiable if not eager black servants came forward to collect our baggage. At the entrance of the main lobby stood the manager, a younger version of Ward McAllister.

  “Welcome to the nation’s capital, Princess. Mr. Schuyler.” He bowed low. We murmured our delight at being guests of the hotel. Like a parade, we were led across the darkly frescoed main lobby, carefully avoiding in our solemn progress a thousand bronze spittoons.

  “Your friends are already here, Princess. Waiting for you in the rotunda.” This was said as I registered us (only ten dollars a day for a two-bedroom suite with three meals apiece). In the general flurry, neither of us quite took in what the manager had said. In fact, Emma was too busy looking at everything and everyone while I was reading a message from Charles Nordhoff, the Washington correspondent of the Herald: if we are not too tired, he would like to take us to dinner this evening.

  The manager then led us not to our suite but to a large reception room, with a great dome supported by gilded columns. On the tessellated floor, numerous sofas and chairs contain what look to be politicians with their constituents: in their way, as alarming and dangerous-looking a group as the tramps at the Baltimore depot.

  Directly beneath the dome stood a tall, formidable full-bosomed lady. “She’s here!” The manager exclaimed to the lady. “I mean they’re here. Mr. Schuyler and the Princess, your friends!”

  Emma and I stopped in front of this complete stranger, who inclined her head with all the dignity of the Mystic Rose. “I,” she proclaimed in a voice that echoed in the rotunda like that of the Cumae Sybil with some curiously bad news to impart, “am Mrs. Fayette Snead.”

  The manager left us to the Sybil’s mercies.

  “I don’t believe that we have had the honour…” I began. Emma simply stared, as though at the zoo.

  “You doubtless know me as ‘Fay.’ ” The accent was deeply Southern but altogether too easily understood, for each syllable was boomed with equal emphasis.

  “As ‘Fay’?” I repeated stupidly.

  “That is the name I write under. For the Washington Evening Star. This is my daughter.” A slightly larger version of “Fay” advanced upon us through the menagerie of politicians and constituents (who paid us no attention, thank Heaven, political chicanery taking precedence over mere theatre). “You doubtless know her by the pen name Miss Grundy. In real life she is Miss Augustine Snead. She also writes regularly for the Evening Star. Now, if you will come this way.”

  Obediently, blindly, we followed the two alarming women to the far end of the rotunda where I could see, through swinging doors, the blessed accoutrements of a bar room. “You may imbibe, Mr. Schuyler,” said Mrs. Snead. “I am tolerant through tolerance, like all the Sneads. The darkey yonder will serve us. You, Princess, will want tea.”

  “Yes, yes.” Emma eagerly agreed as we sat in a circle close to the bar room, from which the waiter brought me a mint julep (an excellent cocktail that McAllister often praises but never produces) and tea for the three ladies.

  “Most European royalty stay at Wormley’s Hotel. Why haven’t you, Princess?” asked Miss Augustine Snead, a sly-looking young woman with a squint.

  “I wish to be a real American like my father,” said Emma. “Willard’s is more democratic.”

  This went down well enough.

  “We shall be very curious to know, in due course, your impressions of Washington, Princess,” said Mrs. Fayette Snead.

  “Yours, too, Mr. Schuyler,” said Miss Augustine Snead. Then mother and daughter each produced a small notebook and proceeded to interview us. They were very thorough. We went through our paces with some panache, particularly Emma, who has, finally, got the range of our newspapers and will now give in the boldest, baldest way the most astonishing invented-on-the-spot receipts for inedible dishes, not to mention arcane processes for the maintenance of youth and beauty. “Once a week, Mrs. Snead, I wash my hair in kerosene.” Emma’s eyes were aglow, and I had to look away for fear of laughing.

  “Kerosene?” Mrs. Fayette Snead’s pencil paused.

  “Kerosene, Mother!” Miss Augustine Snead knew a rare story when it came her way. “Yes, we’ve heard they do that in Paris.”

  “It was the Empress herself who made the discovery first.” Emma’s voice was hushed. “I myself find that within one hour of the washing, my hair has the most lustrous texture. You both must try it. Not,” said Emma quickly, aware of the rather thin lustreless heads of hair opposite her, “that you are in any need…”

  “Oh, yes, we are.” Miss Augustine Snead was firm. “Fact, Mother’s going a bit bald on the top if the whole truth were known.”

  “Let us try then to contain the whole truth, Gussy dear.” Mrs. Fayette fairly beamed her displeasure. Then, to Emma: “But is there not, Princess, some danger of conflagration should one draw too close, let us say, to a lamp?”

  “No, not at all. At least not during the one hour when you must sit absolutely still with your head held as far back as it will go so that the loosened hairs can freely breathe.”

  Other subjects were handled by Emma with the smoothness of a professional lecturer. I’m not at all sure that she ought not to go out on the circuit. If she were not engaged to be married, I would without conscience despatch her to thirty cities, with myself as personal manager and advertisement concocter.

  The ladies knew of Emma’s engagement.

  “Won’t you miss not being a Princess any more?” asked sly Miss Augustine.

  For the first time, Emma was irritated. But she concealed it from the ladies. “There is no European title, Miss Snead, that is finer than that of the simple American Missis.”

  “Hear, hear!” I said gravely, swallowing the last of my mint julep. A few moments later we were in our suite, roaring with laughter. The thought of the Sneads, mother and daughter, with hair aflame like so many wigs of Nessus did us both a world of good.

  Bathed and rested (one must, alas, go down the hall to the bathroom—the appointments here are not in a class with those of the Fifth Avenue Hotel, but then neither, thank God, is the price), we met Charles Nordhoff in the lobby at seven o’clock.

  I confess that at first I was somewhat intimidated by this stern Prussian-born man of forty whose profession it is to write about Washington politics for the Herald. I feared that he would regard me, rightly, as a presumptuous dilettante, a celebrated writer from outside sent by a frivolous publisher to take precedence over him for at least twelve weeks.

  Our first encounter at the reception desk in the lobby was not encouraging. Nordhoff is a thick-set man with what I believe is known as a “nautical swagger”; at least, he walks with a peculiar lurching gait, memorial to his many years at sea. Like my old friend Leggett of the Post, Nordhoff’s career began at sea: first with our navy, then aboard various sailing vessels. He is the author of a once-popular book that I have not read called Nine Years a Sailor. Nordhoff worked for Bryant at the Post until he was sacked because—everyone but Bryant says—of his attacks on the Tweed Ring (must ask him the truth of that story). Jamie then took him on for the Herald. Last year Nordhoff found time to write a most interesting book which I have read called Communistic Societies of the United States. This subject proved to be our bond.

 
; Nordhoff clicked his heels for Emma, bowed low and kissed her hand. Warned by me of his German background, she spoke softly to him in German. Surprised and pleased, he answered. Then he took my hand, gave me a long thorough look and said, “Paris Under the Communards is the best and most serious work I have yet read on communism, published in any language.”

  I do believe I blushed. Certainly I felt giddy with this unexpected praise, so much so that I did not for once mind that he had, like everyone else, got the title wrong. I have always had bad luck with titles. I should, obviously, imitate the masters and be terse, stark, memorable. Madame Bovary, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Bleak House: no mistaking those titles once seen or heard.

  Just before we got to the main door, Nordhoff said, “You should meet Mr. Roose. He knows everything. If you’ll forgive us,” he said to Emma, who smiled forgiveness.

  Nordhoff then led me in to a small tobacconist’s shop just to the right of the front door as you enter. Here were sold not only cigars, cigarettes and plugs of chewing tobacco, but newspapers and periodicals from all over the country. Mr. Roose is a dignified, almost senatorial figure; solemnly he welcomed me to Washington as he gave Nordhoff an envelope (he runs a sort of post office, too). “Our special telegraph office is right there, should you be needing it, Mr. Schuyler.” And sure enough, in the next room, there was indeed that modern convenience, courtesy of Western Union. Mr. Roose also promised to reserve for me each day a copy of “our” paper, the New York Herald.

  A long line of hackney cabs is permanently stationed in front of the hotel but Nordhoff suggested that if Emma was game we walk to a restaurant called Welcher’s. “It’s not far from here, and there’s a sidewalk most of the way.”

  Emma was game. “It is Africa!” she whispered to me in French as we made our way along the uneven brick sidewalk, where scores of blacks sat comfortably as though at home. Some drank, some played at dice, others made mournful music on homemade pipes whilst overall, in the distance, floating like a dream carved in whitest soap, was the Capitol, ringed by boarding houses.