1876 (11 page)

The thought of Father Apgar and Sister Faith made me ever so slightly depressed. I seized a silver goblet of champagne from a passing waiter. Two long swallows and I was able to exorcize the vision of our last dinner at the Apgars, of John’s grave full-fleshed parents, proud in their dullness; of Sister Faith, a horse-like bride of Christ if ever I saw one though Protestant—yet not protesting her terrible fate. Whenever Sister Faith asked about Paris, Father Apgar coughed and Mother A. changed the subject. Paris is not a subject for nice people to talk about, particularly in front of plain girls like Faith. Proper subjects in that household are the demerits of most servants, summer residences (when to open, shut), food (its cost, not its preparation), and an occasional reference to the low sort of people who are trying to take over New York society because They Have Money, like the Paran Stevenses for one, or the vulgar Commodore Vanderbilt for another, or the Astors.

At this point, I had interrupted our hostess; told her that in my youth before she was born (I think she liked
that
, presuming she is capable of liking anything other than Apgar-ishness, my new synonym for social worthiness), the original Astor in his old age was much sought after by Livingstons and Stuyvesants. Actually, I don’t think that this is exactly true (the original Astor was a reclusive Medicean figure). But it does strike me as strange that after two or three generations of lawyerhood such markedly middle-class people as the Apgars should have convinced themselves that somehow they are more special, more distinguished, more truly nice than the great nobles, which, like it or not (and I like it not), is what the Astors are; the third generation of that family now dominates the city in what, I suspect, is perfect ignorance of the disapproval of the nine Apgar brothers, whose sole distinction is their innumerable links with a hundred and one similar lawyer-sailor-merchant-thief families.

But this is not the place for my eventual essay on Apgar-ishness. That must wait until I am safely home again. I will record only Apgar Senior’s view of Governor Tilden. “The man is so often drunk that he cannot get up in the morning.” This was announced over cigars after the ladies had gone up to the dark cold parlour.

“But I understand General Grant is also a heavy drinker.” I tried to even the score.

“I have
never
heard that,” said Apgar Senior.

Meanwhile there are pleasures here, of a sort, and Mrs. Stevens’s musical Sunday evenings must count amongst them.

We sat on gold chairs and listened to a powerful Italian tenor from the opera house. There were tears in the eyes of many of the ladies when he ended his recital with the very loud, sobbing solo from
Martha
.
My own eyes were dry, but there was a definite persistent ringing in my ears. This often happens when my blood is overheated by champagne and music and the presence of, I confess, an uncommonly handsome group of women.

Music done with, we went in to supper. Mountain ranges of a rather inferior chicken salad were the dominant note. We were seated at numerous small tables. I found myself between a good-looking little woman of Emma’s age and a fair little fellow in his early forties.

I addressed myself to the lady. We introduced ourselves but neither, at first, heard the other’s name. She pointed an importantly jewelled finger at Emma across the room, and said, “Have you got to meet the Princess yet?”

“Better than that. I
be
got her.”

I was rewarded with a straightforward laugh; not at all Apgar-ish, I was happy to note. This charming creature is called Mrs. William Sanford. She pointed out her husband, who was seated at Emma’s right.

“I must say she is even more beautiful than her photograph. And the way she moves!”

I accepted any number of compliments from Mrs. Sanford, learning in the process that she and her husband are building a house in Fifth Avenue, that they have a cottage at Newport, Rhode Island (plainly the most fashionable of the summer places, since the Apgars pointedly prefer Maine), and that Mr. Sanford enjoys yachting, owns race horses, and
does
—as they say here—nothing, as far as I could tell from her conversation.

All subjects were touched on. Oh, yes, she knew Mrs. Mary Mason Jones! Such a character! And dear old
silly
Ward McAllister!—with his “don’t you knows.” We got on famously, passing various names back and forth to establish one another’s place in the scheme of things. I found her delightful; but still had no clue to the source of the Sanford fortune—was it his or hers?

After several mediocre courses, including fried oysters, which will one day be my happy death, I turned to my neighbour, who introduced himself (as if he needed an introduction to a fellow author). Although the celebrated Edmund C. Stedman is a Wall Street broker by profession, his passion, more or less requited, is for literature and for the making of taste, a sort of rustic Sainte-Beuve (whose name he did not appear to recognize—more of this cultural difference later). Last year Stedman published two volumes on (of?) Victorian poets as well as a volume of his own poetical works which I—yes, all dark things are to be confessed here—told him that I had read and admired. Actually, I did hold the book in my hand at Brentano’s, and listened to the clerk’s description of the author, who regularly visits the shop, presumably to encourage the clerks to sell his works.

I was rewarded for my mendacity with yet another invitation to address the Lotos Club, as well as with the assurance that I alone of all living historians of the present
(sic?)
have been able to make clear for Americans the internecine struggles of immoral old Europe. I confess that this encomium made me seem to myself like one of those seedy pitchmen at a side show, showing off for a penny the swallower of swords, the eaters of glass and of fire.

Since Stedman knows Bigelow, I tried to get the subject onto politics and the day’s scandal, but once again I found myself confronted by this strange New York wall of—indifference? No, I cannot believe that they are indifferent to the ubiquitous corruption.

I can understand the gentry preferring not to acknowledge the hell that their puritan society has become even as the devils piously continue to mouth puritan nostrums. But for a man like Stedman to shy away from
any
discussion of the Grant Administration is very odd indeed. After all, Stedman was a celebrated supporter of Lincoln. Provisionally, I take this reluctance to be a form of embarrassment at what they—I can no longer write we—have become. More to the’ point, the noble new party that freed the slaves and preserved the Union is the very same party that is now in cahoots with the crooked railroad tycoons and with the Wall Street cornerers of this-and-that, thus making it hard for a noble creature like Bigelow—like Stedman?—to confess to the bankruptcy of what only ten years ago was the last or latest, best or better, hope or dream of an honourable system of government.

“I much admire Bigelow’s pieces from Germany. Not on a par with yours, of course ...”

I was modest. Pressed on. “Now Bigelow goes to Albany. Is this wise?”

Like a diviner, Stedman tentatively touched a complex aspic with his fork. “It is odd, certainly. After all, we are Republicans. But then Governor Tilden is certainly—respectable. Not long ago I had the most interesting conversation with him about airships.”

It took me some moments to make sense of this last phrase. When finally I did, I realized that I was in the presence of a most amiable monomaniac. “Man must fly through the air, just as he now travels across the earth at thirty or forty miles an hour and almost as swiftly over the seas. There are a number of practical methods ...”

“Balloons ...?” That was my sole contribution, for Stedman did not stop in his discussion of air travel until those about us started to rise. He hoped that I would soon join him for lunch or supper at any one of those clubs that encourage Bohemian membership.

“Literary New York is eager to meet you.”

“Surely they hardly know that Rip Van ...” But I stopped myself as that dread name once again climbed out onto the end of my tongue. Fortunately Stedman was not listening.

“You will like Bayard Taylor, I’m sure. He’s teaching German literature up at Cornell. But now he’s in the city. Or have you already met each other in Europe?”

“No, I think not.” I have been very much aware over the years of those of my literary countrymen who keep coming in what seem hordes to old Europe, where they usually stay longer than planned. Yet I have, as much as possible, avoided them. Somehow they never seem to fit our way of life at Paris: this includes Bryant, though he and I have met in Europe off and on over the years, usually in Italy. I once debated (and the negative won) taking him to Princess Mathilde’s, where he might meet her circle, particularly my especial friend Taine, as well as such amusing novelists as Gautier, the Goncourt brothers and the Russian Turgenev. But somehow I could not imagine William Cullen Bryant in that circle (where even I, after forty years, am still known as the “blond wild Indian”). I fear that that brilliant circle would sooner roast a waterfowl than apostrophize it.

Lately the young journalist-writers have been descending on Europe like termites on an ancient frame house, and London has taken them very much to heart. The English can never get enough of the grotesque; they particularly delight in those Americans who seem to them truly American, preferably the ones with long hair and Western twangs, who chew tobacco and tell tall tales—ah, those tall tales of wild Indians and of drunken bears and of jumping frogs. N.P. Willis, Joaquin Miller, Mark Twain and, most interesting of all, I am told, a Californian called (I think) Pierce whose work I have not read, but whose brilliant mordant conversation has been reported to me by the Princess Mathilde who hears of him from the Empress at Chislehurst. Our Empress may be bored by literary men and explorers, but apparently a son of the American West has discovered how to make her exile amusing. Needless to say, nothing west of Seine-et-Oise interests Paris, including, alas, their former Empress.

Stedman mentioned any number of literary men I must meet and I pretended interest, although I have never found congenial the company of professional writers. Also, I do not read novels any more whilst today’s poetry makes me quite angry, since, at best, it is no more than carefully ruined prose.

History and politics are my field, and New York seems not to be rich in either historians or true political writers despite the often interesting efforts of the Adams descendant who edits Boston’s
North American Review
.
But I am unfair to my countrymen. I have been here too short a time to judge. Also, I tend to compare the home product with Paris at a time when I think that city is, for once, what in its eternal arrogance Paris thinks itself always to be, a city of true light with Taine and Renan ablaze, and a thousand ideas stirring.

I found it amusing (the ironist’s word for “discouraging”) that when I spoke to Stedman of French writers, he seemed not even to know their names. He has heard of Flaubert of course; knows that
Madame Bovary
was an immoral novel that even the French tried to ban; insists that better than “all that lot, and far more daring” is an American poet much disliked by the prudish American reviewers. I promise to read this poet, who is called Whitman and lives at Camden in New Jersey; apparently, he enjoys good sales in America and good notices in England. Lucky man! The other way round would be unbearable.

Stedman moved on. I asked Mrs. Sanford if she would like to meet Emma.

“With joy! I’m French too, you know. I was born in New Orleans. My father was General Delacroix, and we’re Creoles, which does
not
mean Negro, as they think up here.” She laughed as we made our way across the room. “Not that I would mind one bit. But it would surely annoy my husband.”

William Sanford is a tall, slender (by New York standards) man, not yet forty, with a head too small for his body, a fine aquiline nose, a glossy beard at whose center is a surprisingly small mouth, rosy-lipped as a girl’s. I describe him in some detail, for he is my first important millionaire. He wore not only a diamond stickpin but a ring with a starred ruby in a heavy gold setting; in the light of the chandelier his dark evening clothes gleamed as if they, too, were made of some rich material like onyx or ebony.

I presented Mrs. Sanford to Emma. “I’ve enjoyed staring at you all evening,” said Mrs. Sanford in a most direct way.

Emma was equal to the flattery. “And I’ve enjoyed staring at you, as well as listening to Mr. Sanford.”

The millionaire took my hand in a firm grip, looked down into my face, as if searching in my eyes for a reflection of his own pale grey eyes. He looked to be so much at home in this particular New York world that I assumed that he, too, was old money like his wife, even Apgar-ish. But he proved to be his wife’s opposite; for one thing, he speaks with a harsh New England country-folk accent in which the final “g” of any word is fiercely decapitated.

“I’ve decided, Mr. Schuyler, that your daughter is the best-lookin’ lady in this room.” The head inclined toward me; he is taller than I by rather more than that small head.

“It was my impression that Mrs. Sanford held that distinction.” I was ceremonious.

Mrs. Sanford laughed without self-consciousness. “My husband is the most terrible flirt. I know. I married him. But he’s right about your daughter.”

I demurred. More compliments were bestowed. Then Sanford put his arm around my shoulder (something I detest) and led me to a sofa for two and sat me down. He produced superb cigars. “Rolled for me by my own firm in Cuba.”

My cigar was set afire by a friction match after the ritual circumcision with a bejewelled cutter. “Now then, you want to know all about Orville, don’t you? Well, I’m the fellow who can tell you.”

Not until Sanford had talked at some length and the blue smoke between us had begun to have an almost narcotic effect did I realize that Emma had told him I was to write about the Grant Administration, and the difficulties that I had encountered in getting anyone outside the political world to so much as respond to a name as grandly notorious as General Orville E. Babcock.