by Gore Vidal
“I like Old Patroon a good deal better than Mr. Irving’s nonsense. At least you’re a Dutchman and don’t write about us as if we were a variety of elves with our quaint wood shoes and our quaint wood noggins.”
Mr. Verplanck is trying to persuade Congress to grant Colonel Burr the money owing to him from the Revolution. He is optimistic. But then the Colonel has that effect on people.
Twelve
August 27, 1835
I WRITE this date …
START again. From the beginning.
Yesterday morning Leggett asked me to join him in the park where the Anti-Abolitionists were planning to hold a rally, with the Mayor himself presiding. In the last few days there have been riots all round the country, the work of those New England and New York lunatics who insist on immediate freedom for the slaves and so have unleashed the fury of that white majority which supports slavery and hates the blacks. The Abolitionists will not be happy until they have destroyed the United States. Yes, I am now an Anti-Abolitionist.
All in all, a terrible summer, cold and stormy and strange … and disastrous for everyone, particularly now for me.
Helen has been odd. Yes, cold, stormy, strange ever since the death of our child. But yesterday I thought she was again her old self, loving and at ease with me. On my side, I have been making an effort to work less when I am home, to talk to her more, to take her out almost every night.
“Will there be fighting?” Helen was not in the least alarmed when I told her about the meeting.
“I hope not. The Mayor will be there.”
“Then I’ll wear the new hat.” A mountainous affair of dyed feathers, the work of some milliner’s Constructive concavity.
Leggett met us at the agreed-upon spot: a block of masonry that had recently crashed onto the side-walk in front of Astor’s unfinished hotel.
Helen gave Leggett her boldest look. “Well, what about the moon?” She pointed to the red disk just visible above the hotel’s unfinished façade. “Have you been reading what the people who live there are like, in the Sun?”
Leggett laughed. “It sounds a perfect hoax.”
“That’s because you’re jealous of the Sun,” said Helen.
She was quite right. Leggett is jealous. All New York editors are jealous of the penny paper that makes a fortune by each day giving the public some atrocious novelty. Currently the Sun is doing a series of articles on the way people live on the moon, as observed through the telescope of a British astronomer; absolute nonsense, accepted as gospel by the simple.
The meeting in City Hall Park was predictably dull. One speaker after another denounced the Abolitionists on the ground that slaves are property and all property is sacred. Much praised was President Jackson’s recent order to the postmasters to destroy any abolitionist literature they deem imflammatory. Leggett has been surprisingly tolerant of the President’s abridgement of free speech. But then radicals like Leggett are as quick to surrender principle when it suits them as they are to decry the same absence of principle in others. Old Patroon seems to be taking me over. I am becoming very conservative, and intolerant of everyone.
To Helen’s disappointment, the meeting ended without a battle. “My hat’s safe, of course, but even so I’d hoped for some rioting. I’ll go back now.”
I was surprised. Hadn’t she wanted to spend the evening in company? “No, no.” Helen was decided. “You two go on.”
We were at the edge of the park. The huge moon was now half-way up the sky and still red … war among the lunar people?
I insisted on walking Helen to our street. I was upset that she (careful, be accurate) … I was glad that she was going home (the truth, may I be damned for a fool); glad Leggett and I would be able to make the rounds together the way we used to in earlier days.
Just back of the Washington Market, Helen said good night. As she walked toward our building, the huge hat wobbling on her head looked absurd, and touching. At the door she stopped; waved to us. When she had gone inside, Leggett and I hailed a hack and set out for the Vauxhall Gardens.
At midnight I came home, having drunk too much beer. Careful to make no noise, I lit a candle; undressed in the parlour; crept into the bedroom, and got into our cold and empty bed.
Helen had left a note pinned like a medal to the bosom of the dress model. “I am going now. Don’t look for me anywhere. There is a milk delivery tomorrow and I owe the boy for two weeks you pay I keep forgetting to pay him and to tell you I am sorry Helen Jewett.”
All I can think as I sit staring at the note is what does “sorry” refer to? Leaving me? Or forgetting to pay for the milk?
Thirteen
MRS. TOWNSEND WAS straightforward. “Yes, Helen’s here. And she does not want to see you.”
Mrs. Townsend’s room—no, chapel—was filled with vases of bright autumn leaves. Despite my anxiety, I could not help but wonder if having abandoned the Buddha (the gold idol was gone), she had now reverted to Pan or some other earth spirit.
“Could I just speak to her, to tell her that …”
“Mr. Schuyler, you are unethical.” This came like the clash of chisel on marble, my epitaph, my doom. “You first came here in what I took to be good faith and in good faith I received you into our family—and that is the word for us in Thomas Street, a family. I also received you into my confidence, admitted you to this room where we have had so many inspiring exchanges. Then …”
Grimly, Mrs. Townsend lowered the wick of the lamp: no waste of oil on me. “You steal away a simple girl, a happy girl despite the usual small disaffections of family life. I have since fired that thieving nigger woman Helen took exception to, and because of whom and only because of whom—if you can bear the truth—she left my roof for yours. I now have a respectable Irish woman who takes a particular interest in Helen, bringing her hot water a dozen times a day as if this were the Grand Union at Saratoga Springs and Helen taking the cure. Mr. Schuyler, forget her. You have nothing to offer her.”
“I want to marry her.”
Mrs. Townsend reached for her Bible and held it to her stomach, as though to ward off evil. “I repeat, Sir, you are not ethical. Some things are fitting. Some things are not. Helen understands this. You don’t.”
“You don’t understand. We were happy together.”
“I think not. Certainly when she used to come to see me …”
“Before last night?”
“She would come at least once a week.” The triumph in Mrs. Townsend’s face made me suddenly understand the impulse to murder, to hold a neck between one’s fingers and crush out the life. “Oh, she kept our visits a secret from you. She was terrified you would find out.”
“Helen came here?”
“I do not receive at the City Hall.”
“She came here and saw men?”
Mrs. Townsend’s snow-drift of a face turned to ice. “It is not polite of you to ask me that question nor for me to answer. But she did come here to weep, to tell me of her unhappiness with you, of the unnaturalness of her life.”
“I don’t believe you!” Yet at such moments one does believe the worst. “She wanted to be a mother, to be my wife …”
“But she is neither and that is the fact of her condition. I think you had best go, Mr. Schuyler.”
“She certainly did not want to spend her life as a whore.”
Mrs. Townsend rang the dinner-bell beside her chair. “You are impolite, Sir. Mrs. O’Malley will show you to the door.”
I was ready to smash up the room. “I shall tell the police …”
“Tell them what? That the girl you lived with in sin, that you made pregnant, has returned to me and is happy? They will laugh at you, as would I if there was any laughter in me. If there was anything in me other than regret and a sense of all-contaminating sin.”
Mrs. O’Malley came in from the front hall. “Which room’s he to go to, Ma’am?”
“He’s to go out the door, Mrs. O’Malley, and to a church if he’s wis
e.”
“Oh, it’s that bad, is it?” Mrs. O’Malley looked at me as if I had just revealed to her the leonine face of the leper.
I left the house in Thomas Street and did not once look back for fear I would see Helen in a window—laughing. No, she does not laugh at such things, nor weep either. She would simply appear vexed.
Like Pygmalion I have spent over a year inventing my own Helen Jewett and now she has gone back to being her own Helen Jewett. Or is she entirely Mrs. Townsend’s invention, occasionally on loan to me, on loan to anyone who will pay the price?
Would Helen see me if I paid? The thought is so disgusting that I can think of nothing else. How did I make her unhappy?
Fourteen
November 20, 1835
TODAY I SUPPOSE William Leggett must be the most hated man in New York; certainly he is the most courageous. I have been with him a good deal this autumn and though my contempt for politics persists I have enjoyed watching him stir up Tammany Hall. The members are supposedly pro-Jackson; yet since a good many braves are secretly subsidized by the Bank they are Whigs like Mr. Davis and Mordecai Noah.
A few weeks ago I went with Leggett to a meeting at the Tammany Wigwam. As we entered the crowded assembly-room, Mordecai Noah was denouncing the immigrants. “They will destroy our democracy!” he shouted. Although Noah himself is not popular, the line he was pursuing was calculated to excite the audience; and did. “We must stiffen our voting requirements. Make it more difficult for this human refuse—this Papist human refuse …” The dread word had been said, and the room was still. “… to come to our shores, as they do now, by the thousands, bringing with them the fever, the plague of Popery for, mark my words, Popery and despotism are synonymous!” Shouts of approval; in fact, an ovation led by Mr. Davis.
Leggett slumped in the chair beside mine. “Unspeakable,” he murmured.
Mr. Davis then spoke for something called the Native American Democratic Association. “Since July our organization has attracted much support in the city and we hope for your complete support here in the Society of St. Tammany. Our newspaper The Spirit of ’76 …”
Leggett was on his feet. “Mr. Davis, is your Democratic Association going to support the Democratic candidate Mr. Van Buren or is it a secret Whig contraption to take votes away from the true Democratic party?” There were a number of loud boos from around the room.
Mr. Davis was smooth (he lies with a kind of integrity). “Our association exists simply to protect native American institutions. Certainly no one here wants our electorate to be dominated by depraved foreigners, blindly and passively obedient to an ambitious priesthood, intent on making us into a replica of a Catholic European state.” A few boos for Mr. Davis; nevertheless, anti-Popery is a popular issue and the Whigs exploit it at every turn. I understand perfectly the appeal. I dislike the Irish and their priests but thanks, I daresay, to Leggett I know that the immigrants are a good deal less dangerous to us than their political enemies.
“It is my view, Mr. Davis, that your latest campaign—ostensibly against the Pope—is really against President Jackson, and is paid for—as you are paid for—by Mr. Biddle and the Bank!” A round of applause from the radicals; angry shouts from the majority.
“I was not aware, Mr. Leggett, that you were such a partisan of General Jackson.” Mordecai Noah was again on his feet. “Our good President—may all the Christian saints preserve him, as they say in the Ninth Ward—has recently forbidden anti-slavery literature to go through the mails. Our good President has said that he does not want a civil war over slavery. What about you, Mr. Leggett? Is our good President right or wrong?”
Leggett was true to himself. “I am against having any two-penny postmaster decide what the people of this country can read.” He was almost booed down by the Anti-Abolitionists in the room. “I also favour”—Leggett’s voice is a powerful instrument when he chooses—“the protection of the Abolitionists no matter how fanatic they are!” The room reverberated with fierce cries; fists were shaken; riot was in the air. Practically to a man Tammany hates the Abolitionists.
Noah shouted above the crowd. “Would you protect a man with a torch who wants to burn down the White House?”
Leggett bellowed, “Force cannot defeat fanaticism!” But the force of several hundred angry voices now defeated him. Since he could not be heard, he rose to go. I followed him down the aisle. A half-dozen admirers did the same.
There was a sudden hush; all eyes turned to observe our departure.
Mr. Davis spoke quietly to the room. “Mr. Leggett does not support the President in his efforts to avert civil war. We of the Native American Democratic Association do support the President.”
Leggett stopped at the door. “I support freedom of speech before I do any president.”
This angered everyone in the room. For the average American freedom of speech is simply the freedom to repeat what everyone else is saying and no more.
Noah shouted after him. “You are for civil war, Mr. Leggett! And no friend to General Jackson!”
This was the end for William Leggett. The next day the post office cancelled its advertising in the Evening Post. Shortly after, Tammany ceased to publish its notices in the Evening Post. Worse, Leggett’s usual following, the workies, turned against him. That hurt the most.
“I don’t understand it. Workies are slaves, too. Yet they hate free black men in the north.”
“They are afraid for their jobs.” I gave the usual reason, having no other to give. I cannot say I much like black people free or slave but I admire the way that out of principle Leggett puts himself squarely in the path of everyone—Jackson, the workies, Tammany, the Abolitionists and the Anti-Abolitionists. He is like Colonel Burr. No, he is nobler. Through no choice or fault of his own, Colonel Burr was in the way of the New York magnates and the Virginia junto and when they combined against him he showed his nobility only in the way he endured misfortune. But Leggett has chosen to take arms against our rulers. Now he has lost.
In a low bar near the Five Points, Leggett said, “I have this afternoon laid down the burden.” He is uncommonly cheerful despite illness and defeat. “I have resigned from the Evening Post.”
“What will you do now?”
“Start my own newspaper.”
“What does Mr. Bryant say?”
“Well, he has twice mentioned the little dog who barked at Vesuvius. But he is kind.” Leggett drank mug after mug of beer. “Now I would like to go to Mrs. Townsend’s …” He stopped short. “Too many memories for you?”
“Too many,” I said. Leggett thinks that Helen has gone home to Connecticut.
A new nightmare: Leggett goes to Mrs. Townsend and is sent up to Helen’s room. Mrs. Townsend would happily do that to me. Would Helen?
We went to a place that has just opened next to the Swedenborg Chapel in Pearl Street. I think Leggett forgot his cares. I did. The girls are mostly German, and very clean. Best of all, there is no Mrs. Townsend. The owner is a pleasant old German gentleman who was once a clown with a circus in Hamburg (I am getting into the habit of writing for myself as if I were Old Patroon writing for the Evening Post—facts, facts!).
We did not leave until dawn.
I think I may have the clap. A burning sensation when I pass water, and the foreskin inflamed. What would Old Patroon say?
Fifteen
December 18, 1835
LIKE EVERYONE ELSE in the city, I was awake the whole night. Half the First Ward has burned down.
It was Dante’s Hell: ice and fire together. A horrible racket of bells pealing, of fire-engines clattering, of houses collapsing. At midnight the sky was like a red dawn. Today every New Yorker who knows how to read mentions The Last Days of Pompeii.
I am thankful that I won’t be required to describe what I saw. Memory too crowded with fiery images. Wall Street in flames. A freezing wind full of fire—an anomaly.
Suddenly the new Merchants’ Exchange vanishes in a long wave of flame.
A moment later I was able to see through the walls to the statue beneath the dome of Alexander Hamilton.
From nowhere, a half-dozen young sailors raced into the building and tried to save the statue. They pulled the figure off its pedestal but then the police forced them out of the building just in time for with a hissing sigh the dome fell in and Hamilton was seen no more (his would-be rescuer was a young officer from the Navy Yard—a banker’s son, what else?).
Firemen turned their hoses on the flames but the water from the pumps did not flow. Or rather flowed for an instant, then turned to stalactites of ice.
Today everyone is red-eyed from the smoke; not to mention grief. Some nineteen city blocks have been destroyed (about seven hundred buildings). The total loss in property is close to fifteen million dollars, which means that as of this morning every insurance office in the city is bankrupt.
At noon Leggett and I walked along Wall Street. The ruins are still smouldering. In fact, the fire itself is still burning with diminished force near the North River.
“Like the end of the world” was the best that I could say.
“If only it were. For some of these business men.” Leggett was hard-hearted.
A group of drunken Irish approached us, each clutching a looted bottle of champagne. Leggett was recognised and one said, “They’ll be making no more of them five-per-cent dividends, will they now?” I confess it took us both some seconds to penetrate the man’s brogue but when he made a thumbs-down gesture at the wreck of the Merchants’ Exchange (it now looks like a ruined Roman temple) and said something about the “aristocracy,” we got his range and Leggett grinned and gave him a thumbs-up.
In the side streets shopkeepers were gloomily digging among the ashes to see what the fire had spared. In Pearl Street there are miles of scorched cloth stacked on the side-walks. In Fulton Street furniture. Nearly every street is like an open bazaar of ruined goods. The poor steal whatever they can, particularly food … as do the pigs, who have declared themselves a national holiday and are now rampant. In armies they trot along the streets, rooting among the ruins, gorging themselves on a million burnt dinners; the only contented sound in the city is their squeaking and snorting as they turn up delicacies where once were taverns, grocery shops, homes.