1876

by Gore Vidal

“So then let us allow him to be the president.”

  Nordhoff found this amusing. “I don’t think it’s really up to us, worse luck. The Democrats will take care of him in due course, preferably just before the convention. But, in a way, you are helping him by publishing part of the story now. As for letting him be the president—now, really, Schuyler.”

  “Yes, yes. I know. He is too corrupt.”

  “Isn’t that enough?”

  “Not, it would appear, for the American people.”

  “You are hard on us. I want this election to be a reveille. I want everyone to wake up. And we can do it, too, you and I and a few others.”

  “Make history? But there is no history,” I said, trying out in my own voice Baron Jacobi’s theory, “only fictions of varying degrees of plausibility.”

  “What?”

  “I meant to tell you that I had an amusing conversation with Garfield about history. He assured me that one can learn the truth about the past through old newspapers, letters, diaries. Then he proposed to help me write, as it were, the history of Mr. Blaine, by setting down in the Herald all the lies he would like to see in print.”

  “But now you know the truth. And the truth always comes out.”

  “Dear Nordhoff, in this case I know only what you tell me is the truth. And you could be mistaken. As for the truth always coming out, why, I think it never does. But even if it did, who would know?”

  2

  JAMIE BENNETT TELEGRAPHED: “Your report on Blaine will insure nomination of Conkling and election of Tilden talk of nothing else in New York congratulations” while a long letter from John Bigelow was most flattering, not to mention promising: “Just an hour ago I was in the Governor’s office and he was reading aloud to several friends your astonishing—well, your definitive—revelations about Mr. Blaine. The Governor was delighted, and praised you highly. Secretly we are both a little sad because we saw Mr. Blaine as the candidate, and an easy one to defeat. Conkling will be more difficult, and Bristow most difficult of all. Fortunately, Bristow is hated by the Stalwarts; in fact, Chet Arthur has told a number of people that Bristow will never hold office again, as a Republican. The Governor said, ‘I did not imagine your friend Mr. Schuyler was going to be such a kingmaker!’ Of course the world has yet to hear from Mr. Blaine.”

  Indeed the world had not when Bigelow wrote me. But today—April 24—the beleaguered colossus of the Republican party rose to his feet in the House of Representatives and, on a point of personal privilege, proceeded to make one of the most eloquent speeches in the history of that body, or so everyone says. I would not know, for I was at the dentist having a back tooth pulled. I am still groggy from the nitrous oxide I was given, and my right jaw, which for some years has not been exactly what Mrs. Southworth would call “lean,” is still grotesquely swollen.

  But Emma was at the Capitol with Nordhoff; and when the speech was done, both came to see me on or, rather, in my sick rocking chair. Nordhoff promptly seated himself at the desk and began to write his piece for tomorrow’s Herald while Emma described the apotheosis of James G. Blaine, with a bark or two from Nordhoff.

  “He was adorable, Papa!” Emma is truly stimulated by this city’s peculiar theatre.

  “What a word!” Nordhoff said, continuing to write rapidly.

  “But he was! You’ve never seen so many enthusiastic people. And everyone was there.”

  “Except me,” I mumbled through swollen jaw. “The cause of it all.”

  “Poor Papa! I never asked about the tooth. Was it painful?” We despatched the tooth as a subject, and returned to Blaine’s performance.

  “His voice shook. He sobbed at one point…”

  “Like an actor,” said Nordhoff, and proceeded, I am sure, to write the phrase at the same time he was saying it, “a bad actor.”

  “He convinced me.” But then Emma was thoughtful. “Well, perhaps he did not convince but he overwhelmed us all. There were even cheers from the people in the press gallery while in the ladies’ gallery where I was, well, you’ve never seen so many handkerchiefs waved, heard so many hurrays!” With gusto, Emma imitated the nasal brazen sound that my countrywomen make when they publicly express their pleasure.

  “I am sure he was marvellous.” I spoke wetly, for blood and saliva have been filling my mouth all day and I must keep mopping my lips with cotton wool. I turned to Nordhoff. “But what did Blaine actually say?”

  Nordhoff put down his pen. “Very little. He claimed he was being persecuted in the press…”

  “Did he mention the Herald?” I was keen to know if Blaine had made reference to me, but though my article was the very first to expose him, he had named no names. I was, I fear, piqued at this omission. The speech was about political partisans and their unrelenting hostility to good government and to the party that had saved the Union, freed the slaves, and honoured James G. Blaine.

  “But what about the charges that I—that we have made?” I would like to take all the credit for the bold exposure, but with some effort I acknowledge Nordhoff’s assistance. “Why did those railroads buy the worthless stock of the Little Rock and Fort Smith?”

  “He read a letter.” Nordhoff was grimly amused.

  “He read that letter superbly well,” added Emma.

  “From whom?”

  “From the treasurer of the Union Pacific Railroad.” Nordhoff looked down at his notebook. “Dated March thirty-first, saying that the railroad had never paid any money to Blaine.”

  “As if the treasurer would have written anything else to Blaine.” I must say the man is bold, the public gullible.

  A series of barks from Nordhoff, and a demur from Emma: “There were other letters. But the point is that he was so forthright. So honest. So—well, charming in the African style,” she added, dropping her voice so that Nordhoff would not hear, but he was intent on composition.

  I am afraid that neither Emma nor Nordhoff has been able to give me any idea of what Blaine actually said, but the way that he said whatever it was that so delighted his listeners has saved at least this one day for him.

  Nordhoff finished his story and rang for a page to take it down to Mr. Roose to send on by telegraph to the Herald. Then Nordhoff delivered his verdict. “Blaine’s got away with it.”

  “And I did the wrong thing? From our point of view?” I must say that I am revelling in a most uncharacteristic and charmless way in my sudden fame. For two weeks I have been known from one end of the country to the other as the brave and fearless journalist who dared to expose the clandestine activities of the former Speaker of the House of Representatives. Wherever I go in Washington, the most celebrated people gather about me, and listen respectfully to my every word. During these last few days it has got so that I want no one to talk of anything else but me, ever again! But after this day’s vivid and historic performance, Blaine’s is now the central rôle and I am eclipsed, at best a pale ghost of a moon hardly visible as his sun blazes.

  “This is just the beginning.” Nordhoff assumed his special secret face that I have come to recognize as prelude to some devastating revelation.

  “Then there is more?” Emma was intensely curious.

  “Oh, yes.” I, too, did my best to achieve a secret face despite a swollen jaw. “There is more to come.”

  “Oh, dear!” Emma is now a complete Blaine partisan. She looked at Nordhoff and then at me and back again, but we refused to satisfy her curiosity. Then a second page appeared and presented me with a copy of Washington’s Evening Star.

  “This was sent you, sir.”

  “By whom?” I gave him a coin.

  “Don’t know, sir. Just came. That’s all.”

  The vengeance of Mrs. Fayette Snead known as Fay was like that terrible swift sword so savagely celebrated in the bloodthirsty “hymn” of one Julia Ward Howe, a denizen of “the evening dews and d
amps” of Beacon Hill.

  With numerous asterisks and blanks for names and horrendous puns, the P*** d’A*** was linked romantically with the B*** J*** while, in far-off New York, a youthful American suitor did not dream that he had been jilted by this frivolous French woman.

  Nordhoff was surprised at how lightly Emma and I took Fay’s vengeance. We explained to him about the kerosene. Emma was not at all contrite. “How was I to know that her hair would fall out? It must not have been attached very firmly to the scalp. I shall send her a hat.” Emma went in to dress for dinner. I walked Nordhoff to the door.

  “What next?” I asked.

  “We accumulate more evidence.” Again the secret look.

  “Where do you get it from?”

  “Ah!” Nordhoff was maddening.

  “From Bristow?”

  “Bristow is an honest man. That is a fact.”

  “But hardly loyal to his president, to his party…”

  “He is loyal to principle.”

  “That!” I am heartily sick of principles, affected or real.

  “Anyway, I’ll let you know in due course. It should be amusing tonight for you to visit the enemy’s camp.”

  “I find it hard to think of the Garfields as enemies. After all, he is a devoted reader of mine.”

  “Not to mention collaborator.”

  I was unexpectedly embarrassed. I do like Garfield, and dislike deceiving him. But then of course he lied to me; got me to provide Blaine with time enough to answer the charges against him. Yet I am uneasy whenever I dine at Garfield’s house and he takes me into his confidence…but then I am not taken into his confidence. I must stop this sentimentalizing. I am with ravenous wolves. This is Africa.

  Emma and I arrived late for dinner, delayed by a tremendous tropical storm that suddenly broke over the city at sundown. Much thunder and lightning and gusts of wind full of rain turned the unpaved streets to thick mud while horses stumbled, carriages slid, umbrellas turned inside out.

  Finally our carriage stopped at the corner of Thirteenth Street and I, and we braved the storm that flung us like flimsy dolls hard against the Garfields’ pleasant red-brick house, so like all the other pleasant red-brick houses of the town. We were then propelled by the wind through the front door held half open by a delighted servant.

  The interior of the house is pretty much like all the other houses that we have visited. On the left of the entrance hall is the parlour with its inevitable upright piano and slate-mantelled fireplace. On the right of the hall, the family sitting room is at the front of the house and the dining room is at the back.

  The dinner guests were in the parlour: a room whose only distinction proved to be a pair of tall Chinese vases that were, according to Emma, “most lovely,” and Lucretia Garfield was visibly pleased to have her own taste confirmed by Emma, who is thought to be an authority on every sort of “tong.”

  A dozen guests had already assembled, amongst them the dread Madame García who has taken to flirting with me in a most alarming way, thundering her heavily accented French into my ear whilst allowing me vistas of what appear to be four very large breasts encased by all too fragile whalebone beneath a purple muslin marquee or tent.

  As I record her bold advances I am suddenly aware that I have not had a single amatory encounter during all this time in Washington City. Nordhoff is too much the puritan to be of any use. In fact, when I made a delicate inquiry or two, he pretended that I was joking. I daresay he thinks me too old for this sort of thing. One of the waiters in the bar at Willard’s did propose sponsoring me at an establishment on Ninth Street, but I was not feeling sufficiently hearty at the time. Since then, my would-be cicerone has been dismissed.

  The specialty of the town is the mulatto, or “high yellow,” girl and I confess that, once or twice, I have seen truly marvellous-looking half-breed girls in the street of the sort to inspire languorous daydreams even at congressional hearings. If only Jamie Bennett were here to guide his old uncle!

  Garfield introduced me about the room. For the dozenth time I met the courtly Horatio King, who organizes literary evenings at which Garfield shines. I have so far avoided these Parnassian revels but “Soon, Mr. Schuyler, soon we shall have the pleasure I am sure.”

  Madame García threw me a flashing black-eyed glance. “I shall bring him, Mr. King! He too shares our passion for Art and for Life writ large!” On the gale of her explosive sounding of the word “passion,” I was propelled toward Baron Jacobi, who took both my hands in his and exclaimed, “To think, Mr. Schuyler, that I shall soon be able to address you as Father!”

  Lucretia Garfield thought this in the poorest taste, and said so. But Emma and I were both amused. Everyone, needless to say, had read Fay.

  Emma was serene, “I never dreamed Mrs. Fayette Snead’s revenge would be so charming, and so flattering.” With that, I lost Emma to the Baron while I met the British minister Sir Edward Thornton and his wife, a couple that are produced in considerable quantity by the British Foreign Office. Zach. Chandler was also present; just as we were shaking hands Garfield was called away to greet new arrivals, fugitives from the storm that still thundered and whistled about the house. “Well, sir, how did you like Mr. Blaine’s answer today?” asked Chandler.

  “I didn’t hear him. I was having a tooth extracted.” I touched my lips with the handkerchief that I have been clutching all day. “Answer?” The anesthetizing gas had made me slow; in fact, this whole stormy day and evening linger in my memory like a dream. “You felt that he was answering me?”

  “Oh, don’t be modest, sir. You’ve caused a considerable commotion.” Chandler smiled down at me—a formidable grey face, much lined, with a shark’s mouth and dead eyes. I cannot say that the Secretary of the Interior charms me.

  “At least,” I rallied, “our friends the Belknaps are off the front page for a time.”

  Chandler nodded. “A blessing, small but appreciated.”

  “Does the impeachment continue?”

  “Since the Democrats control the House, there will be an impeachment. Of course the whole thing is illegal. How can you impeach and try and perhaps remove from office a member of the Cabinet who is no longer in the Cabinet?”

  I did not make any contribution to this subtle constitutional question because, like the Devil himself, with a clap of thunder and a gust of wind, James G. Blaine had entered the room from the vestibule and stood in the doorway. Garfield promptly seized him in that peculiar way of his which is almost an embrace; as he pulled the hero close to his side, he quite blocked from view the charming Mrs. Blaine.

  Applause from everyone in the parlour, save the foreigners—and myself. Then the great man made a slow progress through the parlour, receiving compliments with a gracious smile until he came to me and the smile became gaily conspiratorial.

  “Mr. Schuyler, I guess you know by now that I spoke only to you this morning. Yes, sir, to you directly. From the very first moment that I saw you up there in the gallery, I said to myself, If I don’t convince Mr. Schuyler who’s sitting there, looking down at me with that skeptical look of his, then I had better quit politics forthwith and go back to Kennebec. So…” He paused dramatically. “What did you think? Tell me the unvarnished truth?”

  “The unvarnished truth, sir, is that I was not in the gallery but at the dentist’s.”

  “That was not you?” Caught in his splendid lie, Blaine responded splendidly. “Then I addressed myself with all my heart to your double, to a counterfeit Charles Schermerhorn Schuyler!”

  “But from what everyone tells me, your speech itself was purest gold, and in no way counterfeit.”

  For the first time Blaine gave me a truly amused and interested look; it is obvious that he enjoys his own performances and is more amused than not to find his art appreciated, even at the expense of his plausibility. It may well be that Blaine is what the coun
try needs (and deserves?). In any case, as of today, it looks as if Blaine is what the country is going to get, at least as Republican nominee for president.

  Garfield was euphoric. He got me to one side, looked at me with those beautiful blue eyes, and said in a low voice, “You have saved us.”

  “You exaggerate, General.” I was uneasy, not wanting anyone else to hear this undeserved and dangerous (to me) compliment.

  “No. Your article was perfectly balanced. You repeated the charges that were being whispered, and so, by bringing everything to a head, Mr. Blaine was able to answer his enemies, to clear his name.”

  “But has he?” I was perverse and irritable. Those who use do not like being used.

  “To the satisfaction of everyone. Obviously die-hard partisans will not be convinced, but I’ve just learned that The Nation is going to support Mr. Blaine, and all as a result of his speech today.” I suppose Garfield thought that I would be impressed by The Nation, a most intelligent and virtuous journal, and as capable of making errors as any other paper.

  “You think the matter is ended?” I was genuinely curious, recalling Nordhoff’s secret face. “There’ll be no more revelations about Mr. Blaine and the railroads?”

  “It’s a dead issue.” Garfield was emphatic. “Oh, there’s some talk among the Democrats in the House about an investigation, but they won’t get far. That’s a promise. Fact, after today, I have a hunch they’ll all dry up pretty fast.”

  At dinner I sat next to Mrs. Blaine. Not unnaturally, she was somewhat prickly, but I did my best to convince her of my impartiality. I don’t think that she is in on the plot. If she is, then she is as good a performer as her husband. In any case, we did not mention l’affaire Blaine. Other topics concerned us. Although she spoke at length of her admiration for General and Mrs. Grant, there was a mocking edge to some of her stories. But then Grant is supporting in a not-so-secret way Blaine’s rival and bitter enemy Conkling.

  “I know that people complain of General Grant’s silences but let me tell you they are to be preferred sometimes to his actual conversation. Just the other day I sat next to him at dinner and I tell you, Mr. Schuyler, that man talked about himself for three hours without a stop. All about how ungrateful the country is and how he is always being held responsible for everything that goes wrong, and how the newspapers have always been against him even during the war when they were guilty of treason for what they wrote in support of the South, and how the British gave so much money and property to Marlborough and to Wellington for saving their country while he got nothing at all from us Americans but a job he never wanted. It was something of an earful.”