Lincoln (44 page)

Both men were silent. From the street came the sound of Negroes singing Christmas hymns. Seward felt in his pocket for coins. It was the custom in Washington, he had been told by his officious secretary in charge of protocol—what the President called white gloves and feathers—to give no more than a dollar to any one of the numerous groups of singers who went from house to house, celebrating the birth of the Lord.

“I gave General McClellan the fruit of my latest reading. I even devised a plan for him to use our army in both a frontal and flank attack on Manassas but …” Lincoln stopped.

“He told you that he had a better plan, which he would execute before the end of this month.”

“Exactly!” Lincoln swung his legs to the floor. “Has he told you just what this better plan is?”

Seward shook his head. “No. He hasn’t confided in me since the unfortunate day when I alone seemed to know how many men we had on duty in the army.”

“Yes, that was a most unfortunate day. It lost us General Scott.”

“I wanted only, as always, to be helpful. It is my impression”—Seward’s eyes filled suddenly with tears: an unexpected icy draught had blown his own cigar smoke into his own face—“that he confides in Mr. Chase.”

“Perhaps.” Lincoln was always noncommittal on the subject of the rivalries within the Cabinet.

“Mr. Cameron has also abandoned me for Mr. Chase.”

“Well, Governor, you should be relieved.” Lincoln rubbed the back of one hand across the deep-set small gray eyes, as if to erase all thought of Cameron. “I regard Cameron’s appointment as the most … disgraceful thing I have ever done, or had to do, in my life.”

“But isn’t that how you got the nomination?” Seward kept his voice at the most casual level.

“No,” said Lincoln, “that is
not
how I got the nomination but that is what people say, which is what matters. Actually, Judge Davis may take full credit for our alliance with Cameron. Just as I must take full blame for honoring an agreement to which I was not a party. Anyway, we must get him out of the War Department fast. What does he want?”

“The key to the Treasury.”

“He can have it, once I’ve changed all the locks. What else?”

“I’ll sound him out. I think you should send him some place far away …”

“Make him minister to France?”

“No. He’s not got the right sort of keys for that. I was thinking maybe … Russia.”

Lincoln roared with sudden laughter. “Why, Governor, that is capital! Cameron in Russia! Oh, that is real inspiration. I can just see that white bent face of his in all that snow they’ve got up there, trying to sell watered stock to the poor Czar. Well, that’s your department. You clear the way for him.”

“I’ve already taken it up with Baron Stoeckl, who doesn’t object too strenuously. Now if I can persuade Mr. Chase that it was all
his
idea, the rest should be easy.”

Lincoln leaned forward and picked an apple from a large silver bowl, a form of rude sustenance that did not much appeal to Seward but since Lincoln was addicted to every sort of fruit, Seward kept the bowl filled for presidential visits. As usual, Lincoln encircled with thumb and forefinger the apple’s equator and then, no doubt in honor of the new envoy to Russia, he took a bite out of the apple’s North Pole. As he chewed, slowly, methodically, like a horse, he talked: “Father Bates took me aside after Cabinet this morning and said that I was far too disorganized for my
own good. He thought I should have military aides who would take down what I said, and then keep following up to see that what I wanted done was done; and then keep me informed, and so on.”

“Well, I don’t suppose any man is ever entirely wrong.” Of the Cabinet ministers, after Blair and Welles, Seward disliked Bates most. “You know what Mr. Bates called me?” Seward shook his head with wonder. “An
unprincipled
liar. And here I am one of the most heavily principled men in politics.”

Lincoln chuckled. In every way, making allowances for regional differences, Seward’s humor was not unlike his own. “And since you’re a smart man, Governor, you never actually lie. Smart men never have to.” Lincoln put down the apple core; locked his fingers behind his head; stretched his back. “Which reminds me of this rich man from Lexington, Kentucky, who used to travel all over the world with his own servant, a white man. Now the rich man was a monstrous liar, and he knew it, and the servant knew it, and everyone in Lexington knew it. So, finally, after they got home from Europe one time, the rich man says to the servant, ‘Now I want you to sit next to me tonight at dinner and if I start to spread it too thick, I want you to sort of nudge my foot with yours under the table.’ So they go out to dinner and the rich man starts to describe one of the Egyptian pyramids which was, he says, ‘made mostly of gold.’ So, under the table, the servant kind of taps his shoe. ‘So how high is it?’ asks somebody. ‘Oh, about a mile and a half,’ says the rich man. As the servant’s foot comes crashing down hard on his foot, someone else asks just how wide is this pyramid, and our man says, ‘Oh, about a foot.’ ”

Laughter plainly invigorated Lincoln. It also acted as a challenge to Seward, himself no mean story-teller of the western New York variety. They swapped tales until, sides aching, lungs gasping for breath, Seward rose and opened the door to the parlor and said, “Come on in, boys!” And the boys did as they were told.

Hay had been pleased to hear Lincoln’s laughter. Lately, there had not been much to laugh about. Whatever reservations Hay had about Seward—and they were many—he knew that the bright little man could relieve the President’s mind, unlike Chase, who only added to his native gloom.

“Sir, I’ve written you a sonnet,” Hay said to Seward.

“But, John, it is still six weeks to Valentine’s Day.”

“But it is today that war with England was averted, which is my subject.”

Since the Tycoon and Seward insisted that Hay read his sonnet, he did, resonantly, to great applause. “I’ll just take that for safekeeping,” said
Seward, slipping the poem in his pocket. “I shouldn’t be surprised if our Johnny was a famous poet one day.”

Seward then sent for champagne. “It is Christmas, after all.” When Seward offered the President a glass, Lincoln took it, to Hay’s surprise; and when Seward proposed a toast to the Union, Lincoln drained the glass. “I believe,” he said, putting down the glass, “that that is enough champagne to last me the year …”

“Which ends six days from now. An eternity for me. Did you
never
drink, Mr. President?”

Lincoln straightened first his hair and then his coat. “Governor, I am a product of the Kentucky backwoods of forty years ago. I don’t think there has ever been such heavy drinking anywhere in the world as there was back then—the men, the women, even the children.” Lincoln looked suddenly somber in the flickering firelight. “Of course, I tried whiskey, like every other boy. But I could not bear the effect that it has on the mind, which is all I had in this world. You see, I never had more than a year of schooling and that was ‘in littles,’ as we called it—a month here, a week there. Anyway, when I saw what the drink was doing to so many of my friends, I said, no, it is not for me. So except for a glass of champagne kindly offered me once a year, I am usually dry as the African desert. But I am entitled to no great credit for abstinence, since I really hate the stuff.”

“Hear that, son?” Seward turned on Frederick with mock ferocity. “If you would only do as your President does!”

“I was taught, sir, to imitate my father in all things,” said Frederick, pouring himself and Hay champagne.

“ ‘How sharper than a serpent’s tooth …’ ” Seward began; then stopped and turned to Lincoln, curiously: “You were never temperance, were you?”

Lincoln laughed. “No. I am not given to oaths; and I never prescribe for others in these matters.”

“I am relieved.” The Premier was in a rare good humor and Hay was pleased that he had managed, for a time, to divert the Ancient from his cares. When Lincoln said, at last, that it was time to go, the Sewards, father and son, led them to the door. As Lincoln and Hay returned to the White House, they passed through a group of Negro singers who, much to Lincoln’s amusement, did not recognize him. Solemnly, Lincoln proceeded to give them all of the coins in Hay’s pocket. Hay had never known the Tycoon to carry money.

I
T WAS
Kate’s notion to celebrate Boxing Day, which no one in Washington had ever thought to do before on the sensible ground that since Christmas was bad enough, it seemed perverse to celebrate yet again the next day. But Kate decided that this holiday, observed with such affection by the British, ought to be equally celebrated by their American cousins, particularly now that the
Trent
Affair had been solved.

Lord Lyons agreed. “Much the nicest of all the holidays,” he said. “At home, anyway,” he added, peering into the second parlor, where what looked to be most of the Senate was mingling with most of the generals in front of a huge crystal punch bowl that contained stimulants highly displeasing to the host, for whom water had been provided.

“You won’t think our giving up the rebels a sign of total surrender to England?” Kate took the minister’s arm and guided him away from the French minister, whom he did not much like, and toward General McDowell, whom he did.

For an English diplomat, Lyons could be surprisingly diplomatic. “Both sides surrendered to reason.”

“Then you bear no grudge?”

“Oh, we hold no grudges in England. We never do, you know.”

“I never knew!”

“Well,
now
you know, Miss Kate. I thought we all behaved marvelously well. Mr. Seward and I were particularly brilliant, if I may say so, controlling public opinion both here and at home.” Lyons frowned. “But our greatest ally was Prince Albert.” Queen Victoria’s husband had died twelve days earlier. The British legation was in mourning. “It is too sad,” he said.

“It is sad,
his
death,” Kate answered, “but the end is happy, anyway.” Then Kate turned and saw John Hay, smiling at her. For Hay, she was, simply, the most attractive girl in the town; of her sort, of course, which meant that she would be easily outshone at Sal Austin’s, an unthinkable thought that he liked thinking about. “Oh, Mr. Hay!” Kate’s teeth were small but even; and reasonably white. “Will the President be coming?”

“I don’t think so. He’s still recovering from the
Trent
Affair.”

“Lord Lyons thinks that it was he—and Mr. Seward—who saved the day.”

“As long as the day is saved, let them think it. Do you ever go to the theater?” Hay made his move.

“Naturally, I go. As often as possible. What you mean is, will I go with you?”

“Will you?”

“Will I?” Kate gave a small sigh. Then she was suddenly alert; eyes on the parlor door. “Here comes the Young Napoleon!” The room was suddenly still as General McClellan and his wife made their entrance, accompanied by half-a-dozen brilliantly uniformed aides. Hay noticed that the French princes were not among them. Usually, the princes were in close attendance upon McClellan in order to learn, firsthand from a master, the art of war. There were three of them: the Count of Paris, who was the rightful king of France (and known, locally, as Count Parry), his brother, the Duke of Chartres (known as Captain Chatters) and their uncle, the Prince of Joinville (seldom known to anyone). This evening they were elsewhere, to the relief of the French minister, M. Mercier, who represented the man who had usurped their throne, the Emperor Napoleon III.

McClellan stepped away from wife and aides and, solitary in his glory, he walked to the center of the front parlor, where Chase shook his hand. Kate curtseyed. Hay watched, grimly. Both Nicolay and Hay had come to the conclusion that the Young Napoleon was a fraud. But neither dared breathe a word of this to anyone, particularly to the Tycoon, who seemed, most of the time, under the spell of this small muscular young man, whose flashing eyes now took in the room as though it were the field at Austerlitz.

“I am here,” he said, as if he had won some incredible victory.

“So you are, unmistakably,” said Kate, with a delicate malice that warmed Hay’s heart.

“I am happy that you could tear yourself away from camp,” said Chase, to Hay’s amusement. McClellan lived in a small house in H Street, not far from Seward’s Old Club House. Although Little Mac—the soldiers’ affectionate name for their commander—was constantly on the move from encampment to encampment, usually in the company of journalists and Democratic politicians (he was already spoken of as the Democratic candidate for president in ’64), he spent no time at all in camp much less in confrontation with the enemy. All quiet on the Potomac, thought Hay, as he returned to the punch bowl.

Proudly, Chase presented to McClellan those grandees that the general did not know. The general’s manners were exquisite. But then he was, as everyone including himself said, well-bred, the heir to a well-to-do Philadelphia family. McClellan knew the world. He also knew china. “Unusual
Meissen,” he said to Kate, lifting a plate from the buffet and turning it over.

“I take pride in it,” said Kate, pleased. “I didn’t know you were a connoisseur of china, too.”

“I know a
soupçon
, Miss Chase.” The Young Napoleon gave her a quick smile. “I’d like to know more. One day …” McClellan looked sadly historical.

Once the ceremonious insertion of the hero into the party had been accomplished, Chase proceeded to draw McClellan to one side. “I think,” he said, in a low voice, “that you should tell the President of your plan.”

“And have him tell Tad? And have the rebels read all about it in the
Herald?
No thank you, sir. You, Mr. Chase, are the only member of the government I can trust with a secret, and whose counsel I value.” The short general stepped back so that he would not have to look directly up at the tall Chase. Even so, Chase still looked down at him and noticed, with unusual clarity, how white and straight the parting in the general’s sleek hair was. By squinting his right eye, Chase was able to make out clearly a set of handsome features through the now-perpetual haze. Chase also noticed that McClellan’s face was somewhat tallowy looking in the bright glare of the gas lamps and that the face looked to be strewn with diamond dust, which, upon due reflection, Chase decided must be sweat.