by Max Byrd
And as for the objection that a third presidential term was unprecedented—“Having tried Grant twice and found him faithful, we are told that we must not, even after an interval of years, trust him again. Who dares—who dares to put fetters on that free choice and judgment which is the birthright of the American people?”
And had he stopped right there, Trist thought, he could have called for a vote on the spot. But Lord Roscoe went on a moment too long, he turned his sneers directly and sharply against the Blaine and Sherman forces, and then against the self-declared “independents” of the party—“charlatans, jayhawkers, tramps, and guerrillas”—who hesitated to join at once with Grant, and as he spoke those same independents could be seen all over the Hall hardening, crossing their arms, growing cold.
The peroration was splendid, masterfully delivered. At the end of it yet another twenty minutes of unrestrained bedlam swept over the building—the reporter from the New York Times shook his head in rueful amazement and showed his first sentence to Trist: Today the friends of Grant threw away sobriety and became like boys once more. Too bad about “sobriety,” Trist thought, pondering his own report, which would have to be telegraphed to the Post in a matter of hours. He watched as exuberant Stalwarts lifted Conkling from their table and swept him on their shoulders back to the New York delegation. Had he learned that jumping-on-the-table trick from Mark Twain last fall, Trist wondered, and the excruciating sense of pause and timing? He scribbled a note for his own first sentence: Not since Samuel L. Clemens climbed up on a Chicago table and brought the house down …
Around him, other reporters folded their notes and slipped down into the aisles, heading toward the telegraph room. Trist wrote a sentence or two more and then swung down to the floor himself. He had just pushed through confetti ankle deep to the rear of the Hall when something—a voice, a subtle change in the hum and clamor of the crowd—made him stop. Down on the raised platform, even as the Grant demonstration was still trailing away, James Garfield had started to speak. Trist pulled out his notebook again and bumped elbows, he was flabbergasted to see, with Roscoe Conkling himself.
“I have witnessed the extraordinary scenes of this convention with deep solicitude,” Garfield said. His voice had a classicist’s pitch and precision. “As I sat in my seat and witnessed this demonstration, this assemblage seemed to me a human ocean tossed in tempest.” Beside Trist, Conkling grunted. “But I remember that it is not the billows but the calm level of the sea from which all heights and depths are measured. Gentlemen of the convention, your present temper may not mark the healthful pulse of our people. When your enthusiasm has passed, we shall find below the storm and passion a calmer level of public opinion.”
“Calm,” Trist wrote twice.
“This makes me seasick,” Conkling muttered to Trist and watched to be sure he wrote it down. Then he marched out into the corridors.
On the platform Garfield continued doggedly on, calling for a candidate who could heal the breach in party unity—not increase it—someone who might draw together the votes of the whole country.
He spoke for nearly fifteen minutes by Trist’s watch, a gray, sensible, modest figure preaching reason, and not until the last minute did Trist realize that this was in fact the official nominating speech for John Sherman, because Garfield, by accident or design or treachery, made no actual reference whatsoever to his candidate’s name until his final sentence; and because every word he uttered about conciliation and calm applied, demonstrably and preeminently, to himself.
“And so,” he concluded, gazing imperturbably at the now placid human ocean seated before him, “I do not present him as a better Republican or a better man than thousands of others that we honor; but I present him for your deliberate and favorable consideration. I nominate John Sherman of Ohio.”
Trist held up his watch again. It was past one-thirty in the morning. The last candidate on the schedule was Elihu Washburne, Grant’s old friend, who had no chance whatsoever, everybody knew it, of winning the nomination. Stilson Hutchins would be tearing his hair out in clumps—Trist looked at the sheet of paper where he had written his first sentence, wadded it into a ball.
At an empty chair in the very last row he made a prop of his knees and started again: A “dark horse” appeared tonight in the closing minutes of the race—James A. Garfield has nominated himself for President.
By return telegraph Hutchins replied: BULLFEATHERS. HAVE REWRITTEN LEAD: “GRANT NOMINATION IN SIGHT.”
CHAPTER FIVE
ELIHU B. WASHBURNE OPENED HIS GOLD WATCH AND PEERED at the spidery hands, which showed quarter past six in the morning.
“Come right back here, one hour,” he told the little Irish driver, immigrant, probably illegal.
“Cold and wet, boss.” Black teeth made an apologetic flash in a pucker of doughy white flesh. “Need to be sure you’re coming back.”
Washburne had never taken a drink of liquor in his life, which accounted, some people said, for his lifelong irritability. He slapped two silver coins hard on the driver’s bench, then looked significantly at the little round blue-and-white Chicago Hackney license badge dangling from the carriage roof. “I am Congressman Elihu Washburne,” he hissed so furiously that the driver actually seemed to shrink inside his coat. “I am paying a breakfast call in this hotel.” Washburne jerked his head at the painted sign, barely visible through the drizzle, ANGSTROM’S ROOMS, not strictly speaking a hotel, but nobody was going to tell him that. “I will come out at seven-fifteen precisely and you will take me to the goddam Palmer House Hotel.”
He clambered down, adjusted his collar, and, because he had once been ambassador to France, appointed by U. S. Grant, and therefore thought of himself as a diplomat, added “Thank you.”
Inside the boarding house he stamped his shoes on a mat and proceeded to a musty, sparely furnished chamber that passed as Angstrom’s dining room. Washburne’s wife was French, but Washburne himself had been born and reared in the rough north woods of Maine, and his heritage—as anybody could tell by a glance at his bulk and scowl—was German. He sat down at John Russell Young’s table, grunted a Teutonic good-morning, and without another word forked a massive slice of boiled Virginia ham onto a spare plate. Then some fried potatoes and gravy. Then poured himself a cup of black coffee.
“Sherman’s gone,” Young told him. “Blaine too.”
Washburne nodded and speared a potato. He hated being told things he already knew, but as a politician and diplomat that was how he spent most of his time. John Sherman, of course, had left for the train station last night directly after the nominating speeches had begun. James G. Blaine had left a little earlier. Both were presumably in Washington now, observing the unwritten Republican rule that candidates keep away from a convention once the balloting starts. Washburne thought it was an odd rule, and as favorite son and official Illinois delegate he had decided to honor it in the breach.
“How was Galena?” he asked, going right to the point.
“Hot.” Young poured a little more coffee into Washburne’s cup and looked suspiciously around the empty room, as if to be sure nobody was listening. Like every newspaper reporter Washburne had ever known, Young had a tiresome kind of theatrical streak. At six-thirty on a Sunday morning there wasn’t going to be anybody up, or anybody awake enough to care what they were saying.
“Hot for June,” Young elaborated, smacking his lips as if he were now an old Illinois farmer. “But the General looked fit and cool.”
“Well, is he coming or ain’t he?” It was too early in the morning to beat around the bush. Washburne looked down and saw that there was nothing left of the ham on his plate except a sweet ivory rind of fat.
“Mrs. Grant would certainly like it.”
Washburne sucked up the rind of white fat like a string of spaghetti.
“She is a very tense lady at the moment, Congressman.”
“That’s because”—Washburne swallowed the fat and licked his fingers—“she
wants to be First Lady again. What does he want?”
“Calm as if in a battle,” Young said. “Telegrams piling up, neighbors hanging off the porch. He just sits there and smokes his cigars.”
“My best count is three hundred and six,” Washburne told him. “That’s over seventy votes short.”
“Senator Cameron quoted the very same number.”
“Well?”
Young narrowed his eyes and hitched his chair closer to the table, obviously relishing his role as political conspirator. Don Cameron hadn’t trusted the public telegraph, and so had asked the reporter to deliver his message privately, but not before Washburne had got wind of it and had to be included. If Grant would come up to Chicago Sunday night or Monday morning and just show himself on the convention floor, a stampede of votes was sure to follow. No delegate could resist the flesh and blood sight of him, that was the theory, and it was probably right.
“Well, he said he would rather cut off his right hand.”
“And Julia heard him?”
“She said, ‘Don’t you want the nomination, Victor?’—that’s her pet name for him, ‘Victor.’ ” Washburne drummed the table with his fingers. Something else he already knew. “And the General said, ‘Since my name is up, I would rather be nominated, but I won’t do anything to push it along.’ And Mrs. Grant carried on and on about cabals and Garfield”—Young hesitated—“and you, and finally the General said, ‘Julia, I am amazed at you’ and left the room.”
“That can’t be all.” Washburne rapped his cup with a spoon and when a sleepy black face appeared at the door, he pointed at his empty plate.
“Well, he wrote Senator Cameron a letter. He says if it seems as though he won’t be nominated after all, his friends should withdraw his name.”
Washburne looked at his watch.
“And Mrs. Grant said confidentially when I was leaving, to tell Senator Cameron not to withdraw his name, ever.” Young finished his coffee and bobbed his head two or three times and sat back and didn’t say anything else. Washburne recognized the moment. Reporters were worse than politicians with their quid pro quo, and Young, who might have a bad case of Grant hero worship, wasn’t any fool. Clearly, he hadn’t seen Cameron yet today, and clearly what he would like in exchange for these little communications was an exclusive word or two about Washburne’s personal motives and intentions in the convention, because Washburne had, as everybody understood, between twenty-five and thirty favorite-son votes for himself, and Washburne also had a thousand reasons to be grateful to Grant for kindnesses received. Why wouldn’t he just send his votes over to Grant right now and start the stampede himself? Washburne listened to the growing silence between them. He was an old man now, he thought, and politically obscure. Gratitude was not the same as loyalty. There was a cynical French saying: “Something in our best friend’s misfortune does not altogether displease us.” He could help Grant, he guessed. But he wouldn’t.
CHAPTER SIX
WASHINGTON POST June 3, 1880.
DEMOCRACY: AN AMERICAN NOVEL
BY “ANONYMOUS.”
Henry Holt & Co., New York. $1.00.
Who wrote Democracy?
If you take the book simply as a roman à clef, a mischievous portrait of present-day Washington society life, this is an entertaining and interesting question, and there is no doubt that trying to guess his (or her) name has been a favorite dinner table pastime from Capitol Hill to Lafayette Square.
And yet beneath its local and topical interest, Democracy is a serious story of a woman forced to choose between two men, one a powerful but corrupt Senator, the other a veteran of the Civil War, now a mild but ineffectual lawyer in Washington. The woman herself, Mrs. Madeleine Lightfoot Lee, is a wealthy widow who has come to the Capital with the idea of putting her own hand, the author says in an impressive image, on “the massive machinery of society.” Mrs. Lee is, in other words, “bent on getting to the heart of the great American mystery of democracy and government. What she wished to see, she thought, was the clash of interests, the interests of 40 millions of people and a whole continent … What she wanted was POWER.”
The author, whoever it is, deserves much credit for opening a genuine debate on the place of give-and-take in democratic government as opposed to high and unyielding principles and ideals that may be admirable but fail to accomplish useful work. Much credit also for a finely observant (and malicious) wit: the President and his wife are thinly disguised portraits of General and Mrs. Grant: “they stood stiff and awkward by the door, both their faces stripped of every sign of intelligence, while the right hands of both extended themselves to the column of visitors with the mechanical action of toy dolls.” The corrupt Senator (James G. Blaine?) rises to flattery “like a two-hundred-pound salmon to a fly.”
And finally, the heroine Madeleine Lee is a compelling portrait (not, so far, identified as anyone real) who combines wit and energy with an almost self-destructive weakness. When she lost both her husband and her child, her sister tells the lawyer, “Madeleine was excessively violent and wanted to kill herself, and I never heard anyone rave as she did about religion and resignation and God.”
The romantic plot, it must be said, resolves itself intelligently. The style is polished and bright, reminding one of Trollope for literary excellence. But the curious and even contemptuous detachment of the narrator’s voice, elegant but aloof and mournful, may strike some readers as a flaw. No wonder, perhaps, the author chooses to remain unknown. It is a voice that seems to shrink back from life, impotent. It makes the strangest possible contrast with the passion of its fascinating heroine.
—BY NICHOLAS TRIST
“No need to wait for me, thank you,” Elizabeth Cameron said, “thank you very much.” She folded the clipping into her leather pocket book and stepped down from the carriage.
“Yes, ma’am. You sure you all right here, ma’am? By you-self?”
The driver was a black man well over sixty, with a face as wrinkled as a walnut and a jagged white knife scar that ran from his ear to his jaw. Back in Ohio she would have found him frightening. She would never have walked boldly up to his hackney, all on her own.
“I tell you what, ma’am. I’m going to wait just over there, take a rest, if you change your mind.” He pointed his whip handle toward a clump of wet sycamores at the farthest edge of the park; tipped his hat; clattered away.
Elizabeth adjusted the strings of her bonnet and looked around at the wide expanse of grass. Centennial Park was divided from the lake and the beach by Michigan Avenue. At one end, through the restless gray curtain of drizzle, you could see the upper floors and roofs of the commercial district—a giant American flag marked the Grand Pacific Hotel—and at the other end a little rise of lawn led to a knoll framed by still more dark sycamores.
She looked down to be sure that her pocket book was snapped shut, then started along the pathway toward the knoll. The pocket book contained a tablet and pencil, a watch on a ribbon, some money, the clipping from the Washington Post. Shouts reached her from the other side of the knoll. She slowed her pace.
It was a very clever book review. She was foolish—foolish—to clip it out. The romantic plot resolves itself intelligently, yes. Yes. No.
Uphill she walked more slowly still. Two tramps in soggy clothes passed in the other direction and squinted closely at her, but said not a word. Along another path several women appeared, carrying rolled umbrellas and wicker picnic baskets and apparently trying to herd six or seven little boys, every one of whom was carrying either a wooden bat or a white leather Base-ball. Shouts reached her from the other side of the knoll.
She had seen a great deal of Base-ball in her life, Elizabeth thought, and once or twice, when she was with her brother-in-law Colonel Miles in Montana, she had even been allowed to play, or at least to bat at the ball when some of the soldiers pitched it. Soldiers had played the game all the way through the war, her brother-in-law said, sometimes right on a battlefield where there w
ere still unburied corpses and wounded men—her mind veered suddenly toward Nicholas Trist, and she brought it back with an effort of sheer will. When he was President, she made herself remember, General Grant had liked to stroll down to the South Lawn of the White House in the afternoons, and at the makeshift diamond the local Washington boys had laid out the President would pick up a bat and stand there, cigar in his mouth, and hit the ball as the boys threw it. Just like her.
She stopped in the middle of the path. She was flirtatious, she knew it, she admitted it, the vital fascinating heroine was a flirt, a tease, she had kissed other men, she had kissed men even in her own house, even—but never, never had she made an actual rendezvous. And Nicholas Trist was not a man to be content with a meeting and another kiss. He was a serious man, with serious needs, that was his appeal. Nicholas Trist had a look of hunger, she thought, and hard intelligence, his wound had made him both hard and vulnerable. Which was nonsense, sentimental nonsense, but true. Every person, she thought, has an outside and an inside, and the two can be hopelessly different. Outside she was flirtatious, charming, men loved to be near her. Inside—inside, she was a jumble of fear and uncertainty, stupidity. In love, she thought, in physical love, a man had to make himself hard, a woman had to make herself soft to receive him.
Under a tree at the very top of the knoll she stopped again. Down below was the roof of the Base-ball stadium where the professional Chicago team was playing Cincinnati, that much she knew from the papers. The part of the field that she could see beyond the roof was still muddy, half shrouded in cool mist, but a few players stood with their hands on their hips in the grass. Another was lining up bats beside a bench.