1876

by Gore Vidal

  “So she admits to her guilt.”

  “She does and she doesn’t. She says it was all a misunderstanding. That she had no idea what arrangements her dead sister had made with the Marshes, and so on.”

  “But she has been taking the money?”

  Emma nodded. “Yes, I should say that she has. And Marsh is going to testify that he has been paying off the Belknaps for some years, at the rate of six thousand dollars a year. Not very much, is it, Papa?”

  “For us—now—a fortune.”

  “But for the Secretary of War?”

  “No. It’s striking, really, the smallness of the sums these people will take.”

  “I suspect they find it simpler and less dangerous to take a great many small bribes rather than an occasional large one.”

  Emma, as usual, managed to hit upon the obvious, which had, as usual, not occurred to me. If the Belknaps are now known to have sold one post tradership, then they have probably sold a dozen others that no one will ever know about.

  “We are moving, Emma, in the best circles. No doubt of that.”

  But Emma did not laugh. “I don’t think I really understand your people, Papa. Why is it so wrong to take money in this way? Who is hurt?”

  “The original trader at Fort Sill is hurt—”

  “Nonsense! He is making a fortune. And he probably paid a bribe to get the position in the first place. And then all this fuss over the gifts that General Grant receives—”

  “It’s not the gifts. It’s what he does in exchange for them. Like trying, just now—successfully—to obstruct the course of justice in St. Louis. Babcock has been acquitted because Grant removed the prosecutor in the middle of the trial and then refused to grant leniency to the prosecution’s witnesses and then, to top it off, lied under oath to the court. The country’s First Magistrate is a criminal.”

  “But in Europe everyone steals?”

  “But we are not Europeans. We are Protestants and believe in sin and in retribution and in the absolute necessity of being good.”

  “I shall never be an American.” Emma was firm.

  “Then let us hope you manage to make John a Frenchman.”

  “I’ll have no choice, will I?” For an instant we were on the verge of a dangerous candour. But neither could face that prospect; and so we prepared ourselves for dinner. I quite like John and I think Emma does, too. But it is really all wrong, this bringing together of two entirely different cultures. Well, Emma will triumph at whatever she decides to do. I have perfect faith in the power of her will, and in the subtlety of her mind. There is nothing that she will not do in order to prevail. She is, in her way, a Bonaparte.

  Mr. John Chamberlain greeted us warmly. He did not appear to recollect John specifically but the name Apgar did have reverberations for him, whilst Emma and I, thanks to the Sneads, mother and daughter, are local celebrities.

  We were assigned to the most elegant of the dining rooms: a rather dark room, made sombre with that black walnut paneling which so appeals to my countrymen and so puts me in mind of funerals.

  John was full of news from Apgar-land. Emma glowed with what looked to be interest. “Your first piece for the Herald was well received, Mr. Schuyler. Even Father thought it was sound, though of course he’ll hear no ill of the Republican party.”

  “Then I suggest that like Odysseus he seal his ears, for presently we will be in Sirenland, and the Republican barque is headed for the rocks.”

  “Oh,” was the only response to this fine aria. “Have you been to the White House yet?” John was curious to see how Emma would respond to American grandeur. But she was demure. “Only to pay a call on Mrs. Grant. We are, she said, to be invited to her next ‘large’ dinner. She emphasized the ‘large.’ Unless, of course, Papa offends the President with his pieces.”

  “Then you’ve not seen the President, Mr. Schuyler?”

  “Oh, I’ve seen him, yes, but I’ve not met him.” I should have noted earlier in these pages that two days ago, at about ten o’clock in the evening the President appeared in the rotunda of Willard’s Hotel. I had been warned that he often likes to stroll over from the White House to sit in the lobby and smoke a cigar, to speak to no one, and then go home. The hotel people respect his incognito, if that’s the word. But sometimes he is recognized by the guests, as he was by Nordhoff and me.

  Nordhoff saw him first. We were seated at the far end of the rotunda, going over my second piece. “Here he comes. Don’t stare.”

  I glanced casually toward the main door and there stood General Grant. None of the other guests recognized him, but then he is not, to say the least, a vivid-looking man. For one thing he is a good deal smaller than I had expected, and though, ostensibly, robust of build, he seems curiously fragile because of the way he moves: the upper part of the body inclines forward as he walks, while the head is held slightly to one side. I would suspect that he is pigeon-toed, with one leg shorter than the other like my mother, whose gait resembled his. The hair is short, turning grey, and parted on the left side (it is said that he has a violent prejudice against men who part their hair in the middle). The famous beard is neatly tended and covers, or rather masks, the entire lower part of the face. Clenched between his teeth was a long black cigar that remained unlit for the whole time he sat in the lobby: he chewed rather than smoked. Just back of his chair stood the sole detective who guards the President on his strolls.

  Ears, nose, eyes are unexceptional, but the face in repose is very curious. There is something hurt, damaged, puzzled in the expression.

  “Does he always look so wretched?” I asked.

  “Pretty much. He laughs little, smiles less. And for an army man he is most prudish. He’ll walk out of the room if someone tells a dirty story—”

  “But he drinks, doesn’t he?”

  “He used to. Certainly before and even during the war he was often drunk. But now I think he’s rather abstinent. Most of his time is spent with horses. In fact, he will only talk to you about horses or the war. He gets upset at any mention of politics.”

  “Quite understandable.”

  “He has no interest in the arts. He actively dislikes music. Yet he is partial, curiously enough, to flowers.”

  “Men are not easy to fathom, are they?”

  “Heroes least of all.” So we stared for half an hour at General Grant as he took his ease, chewed his cigar, looked at the people coming and going like any other war veteran come home to grow old, to sit on the courthouse steps of an evening and watch others live.

  Finally, the President was recognized. Two political types (of the lobby, not the Congress: I’ve got so I can tell them apart with a glance) emerged from the barroom and, rather drunkenly, presented themselves for Grant’s attention. The hero’s face did not once lose its puzzled expression while the blue eyes did not, to say the least, invite any intimacy with the strangers.

  As Grant got to his feet one of the men seized his hand. The President allowed the hand to be held for an instant. Then he pulled it—and himself—away. The two men suddenly were faced not with the President but with the tall detective who had placed his large presence between them and the retreating small figure. In an instant the scene was done.

  “Is he stupid?” I asked, genuinely curious.

  “No. But limited. Without much curiosity. Yet he has come to know a good deal more about government than most people suspect. But he has—obviously—no gift for presiding over this country.”

  I laughed, at the odd way Nordhoff expressed himself, like a translation from the German. “Who could govern such a place?”

  “Tilden, I think.”

  “Not Blaine?”

  “Too corrupt.”

  “Conkling?”

  “Too proud, too unyielding.”

  “Is there anyone else?”

  “A hundred candidates
, but none of any distinction. I have a personal fondness for Congressman Garfield. He is a scholar. A cultivated man. But weak in character. Like almost all of the Congress, he took money from the Crédit Mobilier, that company which owned the Union Pacific Railroad.”

  General (of course) James Garfield is a member of the House of Representatives from Ohio. He is relatively ungreedy, since “He took only three hundred and twenty-nine dollars from the Union Pacific. I believe he called it a dividend against some stock that may never have existed. By the way, I saw him this morning and he said that he would like to meet you.”

  “For three hundred and twenty-nine dollars, tell him that I shall be his creature, and concoct advertisements for him.”

  But Nordhoff has not much lightness when the subject is his subject, the politics of the United States. Garfield is a classicist. Simultaneously, he can write Greek with one hand and Latin with the other—the result must be dreadful; he belongs to Washington’s most intellectual literary club; he particularly admires the works of Washington Irving and wants to meet me, largely, I suspect, because he knows that I go back to that era.

  I don’t know why, but any hour spent with any Apgar seems to contain not the sixty precious passing minutes that old men are supposed to cherish but more like ninety minutes of marking rather than living time. It has been a tiring day.

  Tomorrow Emma will devote herself to the Day family; and perhaps take tea with Mrs. Fish. I shall attend the hearing of the House Committee on Expenditures in the War Department, and listen to what Mr. Marsh has to say.

  Six

  1

  NORDHOFF INTRODUCED ME to Congressman General Garfield in the huge gloomy rotunda of the Capitol where squalid booths have been set up by enterprising businessmen to sell visitors everything from food to patriotic knickknacks.

  I must say that I was pleasantly impressed by the golden-bearded, blue-eyed Garfield. He is about six feet tall and not, astonishingly, too fat, considering his age (forty-five?) and position in the world.

  “Now that we have met, Mr. Schuyler, I hope that you will do us the honour of coming to the house…” The usual formula was offered and responded to. Meanwhile Garfield was shepherding Nordhoff and me down a frescoed corridor, through jostling crowds of congressmen, lobbyists, mere citizens. Finally, we stopped at the door to that committee room which, for several hours today, was the focal point of the nation’s political life.

  Outside the door sergeants-at-arms were pushing members of the newspaper press back. “We’re full up, gentlemen. Full up!” But after a whispered word from Congressman Garfield, Nordhoff and I were able to slip into the crowded committee room and squeeze places for ourselves just back of a row of fashionable ladies, all jammed together on narrow benches.

  At a long table sat the members of the committee, chaired, to my astonishment, by Representative Clymer. I whispered to Nordhoff how I had met Clymer at the Belknaps’ house. Nordhoff was fascinated. “He actually told you he was Belknap’s roommate at Princeton?”

  “Yes. And his oldest friend.”

  Nordhoff whistled. “They must’ve been trying to fix something at that dinner party because Clymer has known about Marsh for weeks.”

  All in all, the human drama that unfolded seemed even more unreal to me than, say, Oakey Hall’s play. The members of Congress (or at least these particular members) deported themselves like the very worst sort of actors trying to look like Roman senators whilst sounding like country Jonathans.

  The hero—or heroine—of the day proved to be Mrs. Marsh, a good-looking woman, who wept noisily, stared boldly at members of the committee, allowed them glimpses of her ankles as, deliberately, she crossed and re-crossed them during her husband’s testimony.

  I think Mr. Marsh made a good impression on the committee, for he sounded like a man telling the whole truth, and thereby delivering a death sentence upon the Belknaps. He even described a recent evening with that desperate couple; told how Mrs. Belknap had asked him to perjure himself, but he would not, could not, had not.

  All through this recital I watched Mr. Clymer. “Pained” best describes his expression. Not once did he address a question of any importance to the witness. On the other hand, Mr. Clymer made no effort to save his friend. He simply sat there and listened as the Belknaps were destroyed.

  When the hearing was over, Nordhoff and the other day-to-day journalists hurried to the Capitol telegraph office to send the story out on the wires.

  Left to my own devices, I spent a bemused hour observing the Senate and the House of Representatives. The two chambers have recently been renovated, and the old red hangings and tobacco-stained rugs have been replaced by a delicate grey décor with hints here and there of imperial gilt. Although there is less spitting of tobacco nowadays, there are quite as many spittoons in the two chambers as in the old days.

  At one point I found myself actually on the floor of the Senate without having had to undergo the tedium of the electoral process. I had seen a crowd of lobbyists hurrying through frosted-glass swinging doors into a long narrow chamber. Out of curiosity I followed them.

  At first I had no idea what this dim, peculiarly shaped room was. Against one sombre wall black leather sofas alternated with black walnut writing desks. In the opposite wall several swinging doors opened onto what, I soon realized, was the Senate chamber.

  As the doors swung to and fro, a declaiming voice could be heard but not, happily, understood. Senators wandered back and forth from chamber to cloakroom, as the room where I was is known. But the cloakroom is not exclusively for senators. I found it crowded with the men of the lobby as well as with journalists and, here and there, a citizen or two.

  All in all, I was somewhat amazed at the lack of formality, considering the awesome self-esteem of the American senator. But then, torn between maintaining a proud reserve suitable to one who has been elected to the highest legislature of the greatest nation the world has ever known and doing business with lobbyists, the practical tribune of the people prefers making himself easily accessible to those who want to give him money.

  Today, of course, was a day like no other. The usual trafficking in favours had been replaced by speculations on the Belknap scandal and its possible ramifications.

  A journalist held enthralled a group of senators with a description of Mr. Marsh’s testimony. Since I had seen and heard for myself what he was plainly unable to record accurately (journalism, not justice, ought to be portrayed blind, holding a loaded set of scales), I walked over to one of the swinging doors, hoping to get a glimpse of the Senate floor.

  Suddenly a senator pushed past me; and sent me stumbling toward the high dais from which, constitutionally, the vice president presides. Since that personage died some months ago, his place is filled by various ranking senators. Today a large solemn man was in the chair, reading what looked to be a novel. So absorbed was he in his book that he did not once glance my way despite the noise of my entrance into politics.

  Fortunately, I was well sponsored, cradled as I promptly was in the arms of Senator Roscoe Conkling. Whoever had pushed me through the swinging doors had done so just as Conkling was about to leave the floor; and into his powerful arms I fell.

  I looked up at him; he down at me. The magnificent face, finally, broke into a smile. “ ‘Senator’ Schuyler, you seem in a great hurry!”

  “I was pushed, sir. And stumbled. I must thank you for catching me.”

  “I had no choice.” By then we were not only standing apart but as I am prone to do with tall men, I was beginning to make that necessary distance between us which minimizes differences in height. Conkling was resplendent in a brocaded vest and white flannel trousers (in February!).

  “A rambunctious lot, our lobbyists.”

  “And much at home here, it would seem.”

  “Too much at home.” Conkling shook his head gravely, deplorin
g with that gesture the common corruption. “But now that you are a senator too, come look at your new home.”

  Conkling took my arm. I hesitated. “Isn’t it forbidden?”

  “Of course. Everything is forbidden. Otherwise there would be no pleasure.” With that he led me onto the Senate floor: a semicircle of desks faced the dais of the presiding officer. Daylight from a skylight above reflected coolly off grey walls and hangings. In the press gallery I saw a few familiar faces. The public galleries, however, were nearly empty. Those few who had come to observe the democratic process seemed mostly to be simple country people who behaved—quite rightly—as if they were at the circus; they chewed tobacco, shelled peanuts, ate popped corn, a newly contrived delicacy with the consistency and, I should think, the flavor of new paper currency.

  Perhaps a dozen senators were at their desks, reading newspapers, chewing tobacco, chatting with one another as a noble-browed Southerner made an impassioned speech whose subject was the continuing minatory presence of Federal troops in certain of the Southern states a decade after the end of what he did not call the Civil War.

  Conkling motioned for me to sit at an empty desk. He then sat at the desk just in front, graciously turning toward me the magnificent head and torso. “You are now seated at the desk where the late Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts was nearly beaten to death with a cane.”

  “Which am I to anticipate? His ghost or that of the cane?”

  Conkling’s smile revealed dingy teeth. “Both are long since exorcized. A superior man, Sumner, but unbelievably arrogant.” Curious how we always detect (and despise) in others our own faults. “When someone told General Grant that Senator Sumner did not believe in the Bible, General Grant said, ‘Only because he did not write it.’ ”

  I laughed spontaneously, and with some surprise. “I had not thought General Grant a wit.”