1876 (19 page)

Cautiously I approached the bed, where the Governor lay flat on his back, arms at his sides. The hair is grey and cut almost as short as that of his friend Green. He wears no moustache, beard or side whiskers. If only for this continence, I hope that he becomes the president and sets the nation a new style. Since the war no one has actually been able to get a good look at any American face, so fantastic are the beards and whiskers, in imitation for the most part of General Grant.

In the half-light of a single kerosene lamp, Tilden looked to be all grey like a corpse. Later in the full light at dinner, his face proved to be almost as grey and corpse-like as when I found myself staring down at the sheeted figure, at the pale face with the large nose and curiously arched upper lip (dentures that do not fit?).

Then the eyes opened. I should like to report that the effect was as electrifying as, Paris friends assure me, that of the first Napoleon when suddenly he gazed upon friend or foe. But such was not the case with Governor Tilden. Rather, it was as if two large round grey clams had, of their own accord, opened and looked up at me, as from the half-shell. Were I holding a lemon, I might have squeezed it.

“Mr. Schuyler.” The voice was faint. “Please draw up a chair. And forgive me for receiving you like this. You are very good to put up with me.”

“Not at all.” I made cheerful sounds as I placed a chair beside the bed. The Governor again shut his eyes. The lids are prominent and, even when raised, give a secret, hooded look to the dull grey eyes. I noted a slight droop to the left eyelid, the result of the mild stroke he suffered last February (and, to date, kept hidden from the public). I sat down, feeling a bit absurd, like a doctor at the wrong deathbed. For a moment there was no sound in the room but the regular soft belching of the Governor. He is a martyr to dyspepsia, and massage seems not to help the stomach’s tension.

“And what, Mr. Schuyler, is
your
view of the order of the Grey Nuns?”

“Most benevolent.” I improvised until I realized what he was talking about. Apparently, the Governor had signed a bill allowing the nuns to teach in the common schools. As a result, there is much Catholic-baiting going on. The
Tribune
is up in arms and the
Evening Post
wants the law repealed at the next session of the legislature.

“I must decide what position to take before next week. It is most perplexing. Much of our Democratic support is Catholic. But then there are all those Baptists and Presbyterians in the party, too. Such a noise they make ...” Tilden sighed.

The hatred of the Catholics is still very strong in the city, particularly in such liberal circles as
Harper’s Weekly
, where the celebrated cartoonist Thomas Nast, himself a German-born immigrant, wages a constant war on the papacy.

“When in doubt take no position.” I was wise.

“I am neither in doubt, nor have I neglected to take a position.” This was unexpectedly sharp, even presidential.

My pulse beat faster as I realized that I must not through inadvertent attempts at wit seal up the future fount of honour. “If the legislature originated the bill,” I said quickly, “let them take the responsibility for it.”

“Spoken like a lawyer.” A slight raising of the awning-like upper lip served its owner well enough for a smile. “I must tell you, Mr. Schuyler, that I have read with care your reports on Europe and they are masterful in their detail. You have made me think new thoughts about the relationship between France and Prussia.”

“You flatter me ...”

A series, or
glissade
, of tiny belches interrupted us. Tilden is so used to them that he does not seem aware when they occur. When they ceased, he observed, “Bigelow is such a Prussian, you know.”

“We have argued about that.” I took my stand. “I find altogether too great a tendency here to admire the efficiency of the Germans at the expense of, let us say, the humanity and the creativity of the French.”

“Yes. I have read you.” Tilden was dry. Like me, he does not enjoy being told things that. he already knows. “I also need your views to counterbalance Bigelow. He is convinced that in the next century there will be only three great powers—Germany, Russia and the United States.”

“I lack the gift of prophecy, Governor. But in
this
century I am at your service now and—later.” That was as close as I dared come to a request.

“Should there be a ‘later,’ I would certainly not let such a mind as yours go unused.”

There it was—as good as in writing. No, better! For a lawyer as subtle as Tilden can never make a written agreement without arranging for himself, amongst the qualifying clauses, an escape hatch. The spoken word of a politician is almost always more reliable than his written bond.

We spoke a bit more of foreign affairs. I told him then of my assignment for the
Herald
.

“Not a favourite newspaper.” The grey lip curled back: grey teeth shone dully. “But powerful.”

“I could, I think, be of some use to the party. Not so much in what I write about General Grant, who seems already retired, but more particularly about his heirs, and your future rival.”

“Blaine.” The word was said softly, without emphasis.

“Conkling?”

The grey head rolled from side to side—at first, to indicate a negative, but then, finding pleasure in that rocking motion, in the easing of the muscles of the neck, the rolling continued. “I think Conkling will be no problem for us. Blaine is something else. Fortunately, he is corrupt.”

“Does the public care?”

“
I
can make them care as I have made them care twice before.” The feeble voice was at curious odds with the Caesarean statement. “No, Mr. Schuyler, we need fear only the good, the honest man, like Mr. Bristow at the Treasury. But such a man will never be chosen by the Republican party. Never. So—Blaine.”

In the dun light I detected the makings of a most decent small-scale smile.

Green and a manservant entered. “Time to dress, Governor. The guests will be coming any minute. The Bigelows are already here.”

“Thank you, Mr. Schuyler.” Tilden’s hand took mine for a moment and pressed it—a relatively strong grip, I noted. “You are the sort of man we need in public life. One who is able to limit theory by practice”—there was a slight strangled sound as he held back a larger than ordinary belch—“yet enlighten practice by theory.” On that high note, I joined the Bigelows in the main drawing room.

All in all, a successful evening. Emma worked hard on my behalf. She sat on Tilden’s right at dinner and I think she managed to charm him, if anyone can. There were a half-dozen Tilden relatives present, enjoying Christmas Eve with the family’s richest and most famous member.

The Tildens are from Columbia County, close to where my mother’s family lived, to where Martin Van Buren lived. In fact, the old President was a friend of Tilden’s father and a benefactor to the Governor in his youth, as he was to me. But then Van Buren and I shared the same father. We were both illegitimate sons to Aaron Burr; needless to say, neither of us ever acknowledged this consanguinity to the other. Nevertheless, one of the strongest links between Tilden and me is the Van Buren connection. Tonight, when the Governor commented on my physical resemblance to the great man, I responded with an exact replica of Van Buren’s secret smile which made the stony expression of the Egyptian Sphinx seem positively open and garrulous.

Bigelow was in good spirits, but tired. “We’ve been working night and day on the address to the legislature. I don’t know how he does it.” Bigelow indicated Tilden, who looked reasonably fit, the belching controlled by a constant nibbling at dry biscuits. “He lives on tea. He is an addict, I tell him.”

“Better tea than whisky, as is reputed.”

“You’ve heard those rumours?” Bigelow did not seem overly concerned.

“Only in Republican households.”

“Like the Apgars?” Bigelow gave me a sidelong smile, and filled my glass with madeira. The ladies had withdrawn. Tilden drank tea, nibbled biscuits, listened as Green whispered into one of his ears and an adviser on economics named Wells in the other ear. “How does the Governor listen to two conversations simultaneously?”

“He’s still got a lot of snap.” Bigelow was admiring.

“You
were
worried about him, his health ...”

“I still am. But I accept the fact that he enjoys ill health—literally enjoys it. He also cannot stop working. So be it. After Grant, who would not work at the presidency—even had he understood the job—the Governor will be refreshing. At the moment all of us are exhausted except for the Governor. But then he has no life, you see, except the law and politics.”

“If elected, will he marry?”

Bigelow tapped the half-empty glass of soda water in front of him—an abstemious group, the Tilden ring. “I think so. After all, a wife would ease his days in the White House.”

“Obviously a man of passionate nature.” I was moderately reckless after two glasses of madeira and a splendid hock earlier on.

“Odd, isn’t it?” Bigelow took my irony in good part.

“Has he ever shown an interest in the ladies?”

Bigelow shook his head. “Never. It is curious. But also, in another way, admirable. I mean he is like a saint, absolutely removed from temptation.”

“Saints, dear Bigelow, are not removed but remove themselves from temptation.”

“Then he is simply chosen to be what he is, a constant worker in the public’s interest. Green is the same.”

“Mr. Green has never married?”

“Never. He, too, lives for his work.”

“Another demi-saint?” I think the puritan Bigelow really does admire these flawed men. Not that I regard bachelorhood as a flaw; rather, the contrary. But apparently neither Tilden nor Green has had any commerce at all with women, with that half of the world who have given me, certainly, not only pleasure but a necessary measure of the common humanity. Had I not Emma, I would make another. Or, considering my advanced age, adopt, kidnap, seduce or otherwise acquire that feminine company without which I simply cannot breathe. The New York world of men’s clubs and bars, of back-room politics and of sportsmen’s pavilions is no world for me. I am an effete Parisian, and bloom only in the company of ladies.

Incidentally (why ‘incidentally’? All-importantly!), Bigelow said, “The Governor will name you minister to almost any post you might want, saving that at St. James’s.”

“You don’t know what this means to me.” My voice grew hoarse with real emotion. Such an appointment does mean everything to me—once Emma is married, of course.

“In foreign affairs, you are one of our brightest stars, except for your unfortunate passion for the French,” Bigelow added; and the mood lightened.

“Then you should be pleased with last Saturday’s gush published under my name in the
Ledger
.”

“It did not sound quite your style. And why did you never mention the good Dr. Evans, the Empress’s ubiquitous dentist? What’s become of him?”

“Still pulling teeth, I should think.” Happily, we gossiped about the old good times in Paris, never to come again.

I did, delicately, try to convince Bigelow of the worthiness of Thiers and, in general, of the Third and current French Republic, but he is deeply, mysteriously anti-French. I put it down to his essential puritanism. Bigelow hates the Roman Church with a passion worthy of the true Republican he was until he became New York’s secretary of state and a Democrat. For decades Bigelow has been assuring me that the wickedest and most rapacious force in the world is the papacy, which one day soon will collide in a perfect Armageddon with virtuous Protestantism, setting off a new, more bloody civil war right here in the United States, the Fort Sumter to be located in the old Sixth Ward, where the benighted Irish live.

I confess that I, too, once shared all these prejudices, particularly in regard to the Irish, whom I looked upon as a kind of disease or blight, killing my New York. Of course they and the later immigrants did indeed destroy the old Dutch-English village of my youth, but nothing valuable was lost. I daresay the fact that I have spent most of my life in Roman Catholic countries has not only made me more tolerant than Bigelow, but also convinced me that Roman Catholic societies are more agreeable to live in than Protestant ones because they are not in the slightest degree Christian.

At the end of the evening Tilden looked very tired, despite a quantity of tea and several mysterious pills.

“I hope you will come to see us at Albany, once you’re finished with General Grant.”

I said that I could think of no greater pleasure. Green was suddenly at Tilden’s side. Handsome, rough-hewn, he physically overshadows his slight master. “Governor, did you mention to Mr. Schuyler our plans for advertisement concoctors?”

“Not yet. Not yet.” Tilden’s voice was low; he seemed annoyed. But Green was not to be stopped. He turned to me. “In the next few weeks we shall be starting a bureau, using all sorts of writers and artists to prepare material for the newspaper press ...”

“Mr. Schuyler is far too distinguished a man of letters for this sort of thing.” Tilden’s eyes opened very wide as he held in his throat what must have been a powerful belch that slowly, and no doubt painfully, he allowed to dissipate through widely flared nostrils.

“Well, Governor, you know as well as I do that we can use all the writers we can get and with Mr. Schuyler at the
Ledger
...”

“Mr. Schuyler is not
at
the
Ledger
.
He is merely published
by
them.”

“But, Governor—”

I interrupted what looked to be something very like a quarrel by saying, “Actually, I have approached my publisher about doing a campaign biography. He is interested. Bigelow has promised to provide me with material. So once you are nominated ...”

Both Tilden and Green liked the sound of this; we parted in a hail of Merry Christmas and Happy New Years. The Governor’s last words to me were “I’ll see you later.” This curious phrase is often on his lips.

“What do you think of Mr. Tilden?” I could not wait to quiz Emma.