1876

by Gore Vidal

  “But it seems to me to be—and I’m not exactly punctilious in these matters—much too swift. Too…insulting to Denise.”

  “You will make me weep.” Emma’s eyes were indeed filled with tears.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “I think Denise would have approved. She loved us both. William and me. And you, too, Papa. If you had been there, with us, you’d understand better what I’ve just done.”

  “No matter.” I spoke again in English. “Well, congratulations, Sanford.”

  My son-in-law was on his feet. “Praise”—I fear he shouted—“God!” as he lunged forward to shake my hand.

  I kissed Emma. She burst into tears. And so, on this lovely April day we at last buried the celebrated Princess d’Agrigente and attended the accouchement of the second Mrs. William Sanford, who will depart next week for France with her husband aboard his yacht.

  I stay behind in the mansion, writing my book and living a life of perfect luxury. For the first time in years I am free. I feel the way a life-prisoner must when his heavy chains are suddenly, inexplicably, struck from him.

  3

  WE PARTED THIS MORNING. My son-in-law shook my hand firmly; he looked surprised when Emma and I did not embrace. Emma gave me a long look; started to speak, and then thought better of it. She got into the waiting carriage. Two wagons were needed for the Sanfords’ trunks.

  “You’ll join us soon. That’s all agreed, isn’t it?” At least Sanford does not call me Father.

  “Yes. I’ll join you soon. When the book is done.”

  “The Lord be praised.”

  Then they were gone, leaving the butler and me standing in the grey light of what promises to be a rainy day.

  I have not a curious nature; do not read other people’s letters; do not eavesdrop. Since I can usually imagine with the greatest ease the worst, I need not know it. In fact, I avoid confidences and hate all secrets. I assume that there are things even in the lives of those one loves that are dark, and I for one would rather not have them brought to light.

  The greater the ascent, the longer the fall. Yes. All platitude is truth; all truth platitude. Unfortunately, it takes a long life to learn this, at the end.

  I spent last night with Jamie, at his insistence. “I need company, Charlie. Because I hate everybody.”

  “That’s normal.”

  “I can’t wait to leave this city. It’s bad luck for me.”

  We dined together at an obscure French restaurant back of Steinway Hall. Jamie will not go to any place where he might be recognized by the gentry. I had rather hoped that he would want to go on to the Chinese Pagoda, but like most people who hate everyone, he desperately needs company.

  Although Jamie won’t go to the new Delmonico’s, he will go to shady places where the people are lively, and if he should meet any of the gentry there—well, they are fallen, too. He thinks of himself as Lucifer, and all because of a schoolboy tussle in the snow with young Mr. May.

  My pen delays…Stops. Why write any of this? Why make a record? Answer: habit. To turn life to words is to make life yours to do with as you please, instead of the other way round. Words translate and transmute raw life, make bearable the unbearable. So at the end, as in the beginning, there is only The Word. I seem to be making a book of maxims.

  Jamie took me to Madame Restell’s house, where the usual charming women and eager men were gathered in her comfortable rich salons.

  Jamie promptly went to the card room to gamble, leaving me with Madame Restell; she affected to be glad to see me once again. At her insistence I took brandy from a waiter, despite the bad effect it always has on my heart.

  “We’re neighbours.” Madame grinned at me; her bright knowing eyes are like some quick flesh-eating bird’s, forever on the lookout for provender.

  “You do know everything.”

  “Well, I do see you coming and going from the Sanford house. But”—she frowned—“I don’t really know everything. For instance, the charming Mrs. Sanford. I liked her so much.”

  “What about her?”

  “Well…She is dead.”

  “Absolutely. And horribly so, for us.”

  “But why?”

  “You tell me.” I was hard. “You know. I don’t. I do know that Denise wanted a child and that you told her that she could have one, safely, if she followed your regime. Well, she followed it, and she died.”

  Madame Restell was silent for some minutes. Past her shoulder I could see the gaming room. Handsome women stood back of the intent card players, no doubt giving signals to their partners.

  Then Madame Restell said, “I saw Mrs. Sanford for the last time a year ago when she came here to ask me if she could ever have a child and I said, no, never. I was as blunt as I have ever been to anyone in my life because I liked her.”

  The room began to enlarge and contract. I thought I might faint or, better yet, die. “But last summer when my daughter came to see you, didn’t you say…”

  “I have never met your daughter, Mr. Schuyler.”

  I should have stopped right there, for I saw dawning in those old bright bird’s eyes a truth that no one must ever know. But I could not stop myself. “The special nurse. She came from you, didn’t she?”

  “I sent no special nurse. And I have played no part at all in what has happened.”

  I have no memory of walking home. Although not drunk, I was not sane.

  I went straight to Emma’s room. She was reading in bed. She smiled; looked lovely.

  “I’ve just come from Madame Restell.”

  Emma put down her book. She looked at me, and her face did not change expression.

  I sat down in a chair because my legs had given way. I looked at Emma; saw her as she had been that evening in Philadelphia at the desk in Sanford’s railway car. I saw two figures entwined in a summer gazebo and I knew exactly what had happened. I knew what Emma had done. Or thought I did.

  Emma was to the point. “Madame Restell does not like failure, Papa. It is bad for business.”

  “Was she lying to me?”

  Emma sighed; made a bookmark of her comb. “If it was only you, I wouldn’t mind. You know the truth. You know I was devoted to Denise and that if I had had to choose between her and Sanford…” Emma stopped; took the comb out of the book and kept her place with one finger. “Anyway, to save her professional reputation Madame Restell is going to tell everyone in New York her terrible story. That’s why we’re running away to France.”

  “What did happen?”

  “Nothing except what you already know. Madame Restell thought that Denise, with care, had a good chance of surviving—”

  “Only a good chance?”

  “Yes. Denise insisted that we pretend that there was no risk at all. But there was. That’s why I begged her not to—go ahead. But she did.”

  “Madame Restell says that she never sent anyone to look after Denise.”

  “For a woman who does not exist, Madame Restell’s assistant demanded a very large salary. She can be produced—though I never want to see her again.”

  “Madame Restell says that she has never met you.”

  Emma smiled. “Never having met people is Madame Restell’s usual form of tact. Shall I describe the horrors of her drawing room?”

  “No. I am relieved.” I got to my feet. Emma kissed her hand to me, and as she did I saw between us, for a brief hallucinatory moment, a single white locust blossom spinning slowly, softly, like a summer snowflake.

  “Bonne nuit, cher Papa.”

  “Sleep well,” I said, and meant it.

  Emma opened her book and began to read.

  I came back to this room.

  I have just taken a double draught of laudanum.

  4

  I HAVE MOVED into a pleasant room at the Buckingh
am Hotel (seventeen dollars a day, with excellent meals) across the avenue from St. Patrick’s Cathedral. My room at the back looks out upon the large vegetable garden of a very pleasant farm just west of Fifth Avenue.

  I work with Bigelow on the book. I write occasional articles for the Post. I dine out every night but, miraculously, I am losing rather than gaining weight and so I feel, at times, almost young again. Certainly the loss of excess flesh makes all the more intense, even rapturous, my cigarine interludes.

  Bryant, I fear, is not long for this world, but then he is—what? eighty-two, no, eighty-three years old. I do worry what will happen to me when he is dead, since I have lost the Herald now that Jamie has turned Coriolanus and gone into exile whilst the young editors at the Post know me not.

  Bryant has asked me to do an article on our old friend Fitz-Greene Halleck. “Because I simply haven’t the time. Besides, I’ve already paid him lengthy homage at the New York Historical Society.”

  This morning—a fine May day—I was both journalist and memorialist, for I was called upon to say a few words at the unveiling of a statue to Halleck in the Central Park.

  Bryant also spoke, as did that luminary, His Fraudulency himself, the President of the United States Rutherford B. Hayes, a true lover, to hear him tell it, of our home-grown American sweet-singers or warblers.

  We sat on a wooden platform beside the bronze statue that looks not at all like the Halleck I knew, but then the best statues, unlike the best words, always lie.

  I read my short, short speech, recalling the Shakespeare Tavern group of which Halleck was the presiding genius. On my feet, I was so much at ease that I am half convinced that I should attempt, at last, the lecture circuit once the book is finished.

  I did not get a chance to talk to the President. Bryant had seen to it that no one could get at Mr. Hayes without first stepping over Bryant’s long legs.

  Hayes is an impressive-looking, rather stout man with a naturally fierce expression. I stared at him with some fascination, for he is, after all, my creation, a major character in the book that I am writing. It is not often that writers are actually able to see their fictional creatures made flesh.

  * * *

  A Special Despatch to The New York Evening Post

  by William Cullen Bryant

  It is with the greatest sorrow that I am obliged to record here the sudden death of Charles Schermerhorn Schuyler, a friend, a colleague, one of the last sharers with me of the old times in Knickerbocker’s town.

  I saw my old friend the morning of the day he died, May 16, 1877, in the Central Park, where we were both present at the unveiling of a statue commemorating our common long-dead friend the poet Fitz-Greene Halleck. In fact, Mr. Schuyler was writing a description for this newspaper of that memorial service when he died.

  I find it peculiarly poignant, always, when a colleague of so many years dies. I had known Mr. Schuyler since he first wrote for the Evening Post, nearly half a century ago. But his true fame rests securely upon those valuable historical works that he composed during a lifetime spent for the most part in Europe. Perhaps the most exemplary of his works is that compelling and incisive study, Paris under the Communists.

  At the time of Mr. Schuyler’s death, he was at work…

  * * *

  Afterword

  AS IN BURR AND WASHINGTON, D.C., I have mixed real people with invented ones. Charles Schermerhorn Schuyler and his daughter, Emma, are invented (though by now Charlie seems very real to me). Also made up are Mr. and Mrs. Sanford, as well as the atrocious William de La Touche Clancey. Readers of Henry Adams will duly note the resurrection of Baron Jacobi.

  The other characters all existed, saying and doing pretty much what I have them saying and doing. The year 1876 was probably the low point in our republic’s history, and knowing something about what happened then is, I think, useful to us now as times are again becoming rather too interesting for comfort.

  Although I have a deep mistrust of writers who produce trilogies (tetralogists are beyond the pale), I have done exactly that. Burr, 1876 and Washington, D.C. record, in sequence, the history of the United States from the Revolution to—well, the beginning of Camelot. Certain characters from Burr reappear in 1876 while Washington, D.C. records the doings of, among others, the son and grandson of Mr. and Mrs. William Sanford.

  Professor Eric L. McKitrick and E. McKitrick have together gone over the text of 1876, firmly pointing out inadvertent errors and anachronisms. My thanks to them.

  August 15, 1975

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