1876 (36 page)

Then, like the sea receding from some mechanical or “automated” (new word) shore, we distinguished guests left the building and our distinctions behind in order to join the humble thousands, as well as Mr. and Mrs. William Sanford, who were gazing rather blankly at the nearby State of Pennsylvania Building.

Denise and Emma embraced like sisters united after years of separation. Sanford and I shook hands, our common distaste in abeyance for the sake of the ladies. Apparently, the Sanfords had also been in our grandstand.

“We saw you and I waved and waved but you never looked the right way!” Denise took one of my arms and one of Emma’s. Sanford led us to Les Trois Fr
è
res, a re-creation of the Paris restaurant.

“I hear it’s first-rate Provencal cooking.” Sanford always knows whatever is best wherever he is.

“That means garlic, which I love,” said Denise, in a most unladylike way.

“And truffles, which I love,” I said, rather greedily, for we had had no breakfast.

“But truffles are from the Dordogne,” said Sanford, wishing successfully to enrage.

The restaurant was already crowded, but a few whispered words from Sanford brought the ma
î
tre d’h
ô
tel over to Emma. In the rapid French of the
Midi
, he said how delighted he was to receive her, a countrywoman whom he had long admired. Emma was gracious. The rest of us were hungry, and the food was good though ridiculously expensive.

I asked the Sanfords where they were staying. “In the car,” he said, as if I ought to have known. It took me a moment to realize what he meant. Like a number of other magnates who had not been able to find proper shelter in the crowded city, the Sanfords chose to sleep in their private railway car. “Just go to the Broad Street depot, and there we are,” said Denise. “Next to the U.S. mail.”

And to the depot we went, rather self-consciously, in full evening dress (“Giving a little dinner for Senator Conkling,” said Sanford. “You both must come.”) On a siding, we found the glossy, highly ornamented car of the Sanfords.

“Very odd, dining in a railway station.” Emma was much amused; also much pleased to see Denise again. So, too, was I. We both found her unexpectedly glowing and happy.

Feeling a bit strange, we made our way into the long, narrow (what other shape?) salon of the railway car. A dozen guests were already assembled. Senator Conkling was not one of them.

“Deserted us.” Sanford was cool. “There’s some reception for the President tonight, and he thought he should go.”

“We’ll survive.” Denise took Emma round to meet the guests. Sanford did the same for me. The gentlemen looked rather like the ones at Madame Restell’s. The ladies were like those at Mrs. Paran Stevens’s, which is to say they are handsomer than those at Mrs. Astor’s but less brilliant than those at Mrs. Belmont’s.

We were waited on most efficiently by two black butlers, and the small kitchen, or galley, of the car produced a surprisingly elaborate dinner. Had it not been for the occasional coming or going of a train, one might have been seated in any luxurious if peculiarly shaped New York dining room.

The lady next to me at dinner was large, elderly, coarse-looking, but with good eyes and a marvellous speaking voice that sounded hauntingly familiar. She spoke with delight of the Exhibition. “Two years ago I bought and learned to use the Sholes printing machine. That was the first of those many lovely new typewriters we saw today. Do you use a typewriter, Mr. Schuyler?”

“No. I am frightened of machinery.”

“I am devoted to machines. They are so much more reliable than people.”

I worried about her all through the evening. Was she an author? Another Mrs. Southworth? Why else would she own and operate a typewriter? She also spoke knowledgeably of politics. “I must say that I am surprised General Grant had the bad taste to appear at the Exhibition today. He was superb in the war, of course.”

She was violently against slavery. She told me that she had lived at the South before the war; yet she speaks with an English accent. I could not begin to figure her out. Not until we were leaving did I discover from Denise that I had been talking to Fanny Kemble.

“The idol of my youth!” I was stunned. “Why, I saw her when she first performed in New York forty years ago.”

Colonel Burr and I had gone to see her, and found her a marvel. She was the most extraordinary actress of at least two generations. When very young, she interrupted her career to marry a slave-owning Southerner. She was so appalled by the peculiar institution that she turned fiery author. She now lives in Philadelphia. Through ignorance, I missed an opportunity to talk of old days.

I did have a chance to talk of new days, with Denise after dinner (there was no lingering of gentlemen at table in that tiny dining room). Denise and I sat in a loveseat. Most of the others preferred to stand. One half expected a conductor to come through and ask for our tickets.

“Emma says she will come to Newport, Rhode Island, in June,
if
you agree. That means I must force you to say yes. I shall use any and every weapon.”

I had not expected such a sudden assault. “But I shall be in Washington City then, and after that I may go to Cincinnati for the convention—”

“You are not going to drag Emma off to Cincinnati, are you? You would not be that cruel. And Washington in June is like Cairo in August.”

“No, no.” Actually I have been counting on Mrs. Astor to invite Emma to stay with her next month when I begin my deep plunge into the electoral process. But to date only silence from the roseate mystery.

Denise is delicate in these matters; guessed at my dilemma. “You’re both coming to New York next week. So why not let Emma stay with me at the Brunswick. Then when you go back to Washington, she’ll stay on with me until you know your plans.”

“If she would like that, why, of course—”

“She does, and it’s done!” Denise was luminous with pleasure at having got her way. I looked about for Emma, wanting confirmation. But she was not in the salon.

Denise saw my puzzlement; she put her hand on my arm. “Emma’s with Bill. In the office.” Denise indicated a door covering with red velvet. “Don’t worry. We know what we’re doing.”

“I wish
I
knew what you two are doing.”

“Well, it’s for a good purpose. Oh, I can’t wait for all of us to be in Newport together! It will be heaven on earth for me.”

“For him, too?”

Denise smiled. “I must say, we ... Bill and I ... have never got on better. I can’t think why. But then no woman is supposed to understand her husband.”

“I think you’ve got
that
the wrong way round.”

Denise suggested that I go into the office. “Quite by accident, of course. And see how the plot is progressing.”

Somewhat baffled, I walked the length of the salon; tried not to step on toes in that small space.

Behind the red velvet curtain the office proved to be a tiny cubicle almost entirely filled by a mahogany desk, at which sat Emma like some corporation president; she was frowning most seriously at Sanford, who was sitting opposite her, his back to me.

“You are certain it will work?” Sanford sounded anxious.

“Absolutely.” Emma’s voice was firm. Then she looked up and saw me and smiled and said, “Papa, we are making presidents.” Sanford leapt to his feet. He seemed agitated. “And presidents-to-be,” she added.

“Your daughter wants me to jump into the arena.”

“Only because I can’t do it myself!” Emma rose. “It’s so unfair, this exclusion of women.” And she meant what she said, for, to my astonishment, she has succumbed to African fever just like Blaine and all the others.

On our way back to this sinister hotel, Emma told me of the plot with Denise. “Mr. Sanford knows I don’t like him, and he knows how you despise him ...”

“ ‘Despise’ is too strong a word.” Our conversation was a long one, since we were caught for almost one hour in traffic. The night was like daytime and very gala with thousands of revellers in the streets, mostly drunk.

“Anyway, Denise wanted me to charm him.”

“I think you’ve already done that.”

“The flowers? No. Or at least that phase of the charm ended when Denise and I got to be friends and he became jealous of the way we’ve excluded him, or so he thinks.”

“And tonight?”

“Denise wanted me to prepare him for the summer. To make him like me.”

“It is not often, Emma, that I sound like a father but all this—plotting is very dangerous.”

“Dangerous?” I could not see her face in the half-light from a pair of gas lamps used to illuminate an advertisement for “I.L. Baker’s Celebrated Sugar Pop-Corn Machine, at the Exhibition.” Emma shifted to French. “I don’t think so. Certainly Denise and I, we can handle him. I was, I thought, rather ingenious.”

“Proposing that he go into politics one day?”

“Better than that. I thought he should go to work for Monsieur Blaine. I told him that, if necessary, I could help him—remove Senator Conkling from the race.”

“The business with Kate?”

“Yes. She told me a great deal in the Rue Duphot.”

I was shocked; and said so.

“Papa.” Emma was firm. “You don’t like Senator Conkling. Kate is no friend of mine. And I do have this already notorious passion for Monsieur Blaine. So why not involve Sanford? Will it work? he wonders. I said, ‘Absolutely, yes.’ Actually I don’t care one way or the other. The point is to get him away from Newport during June while I’m there.”

“You are—elaborate, Emma.”

In the now three-quarter light from a theatre’s marquee, she smiled, and squeezed my hand. “Don’t worry, Papa. Your Governor Tilden is bound to defeat my Monsieur Blaine.”

“So I pray. Certainly, I don’t think your plot will come to anything politically. I can’t imagine Sanford as a successful
intrigueur
.
But if you can keep him away from Newport while we’re there, you have my blessing.”

Emma wanted to know if I approved of her staying at the Brunswick with Denise.

“I never give, never withhold approval where you’re concerned. You’re a grown woman. Do what you like.”

“It will certainly save money.”

“But will
he
be there?”

“Not if he gets involved with M. Blaine. And I think he will. I think he took the bait.”

“It
is
a pity that you cannot be in politics.”

Emma laughed. “I should probably be as big a fool as our Empress.”

“What about John?”

The response was quick. “He can visit me as easily at the Brunswick as at the Fifth Avenue Hotel.”

“And at Newport?”

“Denise will invite him to stay. ‘I’ll be your duenna,’ she said. She is a marvellous woman, Papa. We are lucky to know her.”

MY PIECE on the Centennial Exhibition is finally finished and set in type. It was not easy to do, for Bryant is still very much the stern editor of my youth. Exhausting arguments over words, grammar, wit; the last is a quality he does not enjoy even on those occasions when he recognizes it.

“But surely, Schuyler, Cleopatra is
not
the most beautiful of all the exhibits. Everyone else says that the work is in bad taste.”

I had written an apostrophe to the astonishing life-size waxen Cleopatra in the Annex. This popular exhibit shows the famous lady reclining on her barge, one waxy wrist supporting a stuffed parrot whose wings at regular intervals open and shut. The Serpent of the Nile is accompanied by pink wax Cupids whose heads turn from left to right while their mistress’s eyes blink in a manner suggestive not so much of lust as of the early stages of glaucoma.

Bryant forced me to jettison a number of telling adverbs, and all irony. On the other hand, he found most interesting my account of the receptions for Grant, Bristow, Blaine. He listened attentively, sitting very straight at his desk: the Moses-head seemed all afire from a convenient sunset just back of him.

“We shall be meeting at your hotel tomorrow,” he said, tickling one ear with the tip of his feather pen. “A number of—virtuous liberal Republicans. We are trying to find a way of salvaging our poor country’s reputation.”

“This might be done by voting for the other party.”

Bryant sighed. Then: “I was at Albany right after Governor Tilden was inaugurated. He was kind enough to present me to the legislators, a truly generous act. You know, he is one of my oldest and dearest friends.”

“But you cannot vote for him.”

The magnificent head shook angrily. “That is not the point! I mistrust his party. And would like to revive the Republican party.”

“With Bristow?”

“I know that many of our group prefer him to the other candidates. But Bristow will only accept the Republican nomination. He’ll never run on a separate ticket, the way Greeley did. Bristow is from Kentucky, he keeps telling us, and so a party regular.”

“Except that he is honest.”

“What a terrible thing it is, Schuyler! Imagine demanding nothing more of a president than that he not steal money.”

“How have things managed to go so very wrong with us?” I was genuinely curious to hear what Bryant would say.

“The war.” The answer was quick, and already thought out. “So much money had to be raised and spent in order to put down the rebellion. And whenever there is a lot of money being spent, there will be a lot of corruption. The railroads have also made their contribution. The scramble for government grants, for rights of way, for the votes of individual congressmen. Well, it would take a strong man to say no forever to temptation.”

“As you said no to Tweed.” I cannot think why I was so tactless, even cruel. Could it be resentment at what he had done to my Cleopatra?

“I had no dealings with Mr. Tweed.” The answer was smooth and oblique. But Bryant has been a famous public man for more than half a century and he cannot be taken by surprise. “At one time I believe the
Post
took some money from City Hall. But when your friend Nordhoff attacked the Tweed Ring in our columns, I was in no way disturbed. But then you saw his statement of April 21.”

“Yes. He showed it to me before it was published.”