1876 (26 page)

The little lady proved to be in her late forties, plain of face and lugubrious of manner. Yet Puss is right, for Mrs. Southworth may well be the most popular novelist in the country. She is certainly the richest, as Bonner publishes everything she writes in the
Ledger
. A year or two ago the public was offered—and snapped up—a complete set of her works in forty-two volumes! I know because I saw all forty-two in Mrs. Belknap’s drawing room, each personally autographed.

“I’ve been following your work in the
Ledger
.”
Mrs. Southworth was both gracious and condescending, as is proper for a queen of fiction in the presence of a mere political observer.

“You are too kind.”

“You have not, I believe, Mr. Schuyler, written fiction?”

“I hope not.” I was sprightly. “I am mostly an historian.”

“Your descriptions of the immoral court of the French Empress made me think that you have, perhaps, the gift to move with your imagination the hearts and minds of women everywhere, in every walk of life, be it the stately palace or the humble cottage.”

“You do me too much credit ...” But Mrs. Southworth had other fish to fry, as they say in these parts. “Please present me to your daughter. I am at present writing about a noblewoman of the Continent, and I should like so much to ask her a few questions.”

“Emma will be thrilled.” I made the presentation, to Emma’s dismay, not to mention that of the Attorney General, who was making an impression on her quite as good as the bad one he had made on me.

I then met a very solemn congressman named, most happily, Clymer. He is a committee chairman and so a local colossus. “I was Mr. Belknap’s roommate at Princeton,” he allowed. “I do think the world of him.”

But I was not interested in our charming host. I was still on the Babcock trail. Mr. Clymer, however, refused to do more than remark, “I think that General Grant has sometimes too much loyalty to his old army friends.”

“I do wonder just how much the President understands what is going on about him.”

“Well, he’s not a fool. No matter what they may think up there in New York.”

“But why would he protect Babcock, who is plainly guilty?”

“I think, sir, we must wait upon the court.” I was put severely in my place.

Rather angrily, I counterattacked. “I do have some firsthand knowledge of the President’s foreign appointments. I know Mr. Schenck.” Actually I have only seen Mr. Schenck at a distance, shortly after he was appointed minister to the Court of St. James’s. But I wanted to draw out the congressman; and did.

“I concede that this gentleman has certainly embarrassed the Administration.”

“By teaching the English to play poker?” I have now learned that any sort of lightness or irony is deeply resented (when recognized) by the rulers of this country.

“I’m not aware of his diversions. I was thinking of his speculations.”

“Selling stock in nonexistent mines to the English gentry?”

“I think that the President feels greatly betrayed by General Schenck.”

“General—or Commodore?” One more military title, and I will entirely disgrace myself.

“General. Mr. Schenck was, I believe ...”

“At Vicksburg.”

“I thought it was at Gettysburg.” Mr. Clymer did his best to outpoint me.

“So many generals,” I answered, “and each has been so well rewarded by a grateful nation.”

“No more than they deserve.” Mr. Clymer did not, I believe, get the point.

Then we went in to dinner, where I sat on Puss’s left. Protocol is an all-absorbing matter here, and who sits where is not only the visible proof of glory but the absolute manifestation of earthly power. I am told that when the charming old widow of President Tyler was in town not long ago, she had a most lonely time of it because the ladies of the Cabinet insisted that she should call on them first. Finally, Mrs. Grant showed pity and asked her to dinner.

On my other side was, alas, Mrs. Southworth, who told me the plot of her new novel, which is “set in a foreign European country where there are alps and numerous chalets. Your daughter was most helpful. But now tell me, truly, what was it that transpired between you and my old friend Mrs. Fayette Snead, known to faithful readers of the
Evening Star
as Fay?”

“Transpired? Why, she interviewed us. That’s all. As did her daughter. We were charmed.” In due course, each lady had written her piece (for different issues of the
Star
), and the tone was no different from what such writers always strike: a thousand adjectives, few verbs, and a great many feeble puns of the sort that Washington people are addicted to.

“Well, Mrs. Fayette Snead is in a black humour with the Princess. And I will give you a hint: it has something to do with hair.”

I was filled with remorse, even alarm. “Why, has there been an accident?”

Mrs. Southworth was pleased with her cunning. “Yes, Mr. Schuyler, at the Princess’s behest, Mrs. Fayette Snead washed her not exactly luxuriant hair in kerosene and—”

“Caught fire?”

“No. Worse, if possible.
Her hair fell out
, Mr. Schuyler.”

“Great heavens! But—but what
sort
of kerosene did she use?” I improvised swiftly.

“She did, she says, exactly as the Princess instructed her.”

“But the Princess said
French
kerosene, which is so much lighter than— Oh, but surely Mrs. Fayette Snead did not use ordinary
American
kerosene?”

“I fear that she did. A misunderstanding ...?”

“Absolutely. Oh, we must write her. Send her flowers.”

“A wig might be a more appropriate though obviously indelicate gift.”

“I cannot think how she misunderstood. Emma was so specific.” I think I patched things up. If not, the vengeance in the press of Mrs. Fayette Snead known as Fay will doubtless be a terrible one.

Emma thinks she may not sleep tonight for laughing. I note with some interest that my pulse in this city is normal and that I can sleep without laudanum. Obviously Africa agrees with us both.

I WAS WORKING in the small parlour of our suite when Nordhoff was announced. Emma is out for the day with Puss Belknap, seeing the sights.

Nordhoff showed me a cable from St. Louis: Babcock has been acquitted.

“Are you surprised?” I asked.

“I suppose not.” Gloomily, he sank into a rocking chair, a curious piece of furniture for a hotel room, but then Willard’s is a curious hotel, combining luxury and grandeur with a small-town atmosphere. Under the hotel there is something called a drugstore which not only sells patent medicines but also traffics in ice cream as well as in an original concoction known as “nectar cream soda” (cold soda water flavoured with peach or almond extracts). If you are known to the attendants they will also place bets for you on horse races. Great city and small town exist side by side beneath the roof of Willard’s Hotel.

“I hear that you’ve been to the Belknaps’ home.”

“Yes, It seems that Emma knew the delightful Puss in Paris, a charming girl. And he’s rather less tiresome than the usual politician.”

“Good, I guess. The fact that you’ve got to know them.”

I did not at first notice the significance of this remark. “Emma’s out driving with her now.”

“I wonder if Mrs. Belknap knows.”

“Knows what?”

“That the axe is about to fall on her pretty neck.”

“For what?”

“Like her late sister, Puss has been in the business of selling post traderships at various military establishments around the country.”

Used as I have become to the way of life here, I was not prepared to include amongst the thousand and one high-placed criminals such a charming girl. Obviously I am a sentimentalist. “What,” I asked, “is a post tradership?”

“The exclusive right to maintain a store at a military post. There’s a good deal of money to be made. Years ago the beautiful Puss’s even more beautiful sister obtained for a Mr. Marsh the tradership at Fort Sill in the Indian Territory. Now, there was already a trader on the post and he, quite naturally, didn’t want to leave, but an order from the Secretary of War is absolute. Fortunately for the incumbent, Mr. Marsh is a kindly man. He allowed the original trader to stay where he was on condition that he pay Mr. Marsh twelve thousand dollars a year. The trader thought this a fair arrangement. So did the Belknaps, who are paid each year half of Mr. Marsh’s twelve thousand dollars. That is how the exquisite Puss is able to buy all that French furniture, all those gowns from Paris.”

“Well,” was the best I could do.

“I sent the story to the
Herald
last night.”

“What will happen?”

“A congressional committee has already got most of the evidence. They’re now about to call Marsh to testify.”

“Will he tell the truth?”

“I think he has no choice.”

“What happens to the Secretary of War?”

“He will probably go to jail.” Nordhoff was grimly pleased that at least one of the villains will be made to suffer.

“Tragic, really.” I was inadequate. “That poor girl!”

“That clever girl! Except of course, she finally got caught. You don’t seem happy about it, Schuyler. Has she entranced you, too?”

“No, not really. But I do wonder what I’d have done in her place—or his place. Would I take the money?” The question that, more and more, I ask myself as I penetrate deeper and deeper into this moral Africa.

“I would not.” Nordhoff was the complete Prussian.

“I might.” I was honest. “Because I am weak, the way they are. And it is the custom of the country.”

“You and I, Schuyler, must try to change, if not the country, its customs.”

As the day was pleasant and spring-like, I strolled with Nordhoff to what is known as Newspaper Row, a stretch of sidewalk just off Pennsylvania Avenue in Fourteenth Street, where the Washington journalists and their friends sit on folding chairs beneath tall shady trees whilst copy boys hurry back and forth with slips of proofsheets. Here members of the Congress, eager for publicity, pay court to the press, and Negro waiters from a nearby barroom pass to and fro serving mint juleps and shooing away the cows that sometimes get loose and wander along the sidewalks, sensibly avoiding that mortal enemy of cowdom the streetcar.

Nordhoff was greeted warmly by the other journalists. He is much respected, as he should be. They treat me amicably but not seriously. They are not book-reading men; and the sort of journalism that I do impresses them not at all. Besides, in a few weeks, I shall be gone. They can afford to be tolerant.

“Mark Twain used to sit here all day long when he was writing
The Gilded Age
,” said Nordhoff, ordering cold soda water for both of us. “All the while telling us how it just wasn’t possible to write about this place.”

“As he proved.” I found
The Gilded Age
entirely unsatisfying: a half-dozen good jokes embedded in a Mrs. Southworth plot. I prefer De Forest’s novel
Honest John Vane
, which deals with much the same material and in a sharper way. But no one I have met has even heard of the book, except Nordhoff; he admires De Forest, too.

Needless to say, most of the talk along the Row was of Babcock’s acquittal. The conversation of any journalist is always more interesting than anything that he writes. Although each is obviously inhibited by the prejudices of the proprietor of the newspaper he works for, I have the impression that given perfect freedom to write what he knows, he would still manage somehow not to be interesting or truthful if only because he is too much involved with the politicians he writes about. I think I met half the Congress this afternoon; and a good number of these men of state were not so secretly spreading about the money they themselves get from the lobby in order to hire as concocters of personal advertisements the residents of the Row. Everyone appears to have his price.

I heard a dozen good Babcock stories. The man’s greed is legendary. When the Whisky Ring sent him a diamond stickpin worth several thousand dollars, he found a tiny flaw in it and demanded as replacement an even larger, purer stone; and got it. He is expected back at the White House tomorrow, and Grant is expected to keep him on as private secretary. There was also a good deal of talk about the Belknaps—most of it confused. Nordhoff (who has got the march on all the other journalists) pretended to know nothing.

“Mr. Schuyler!” I heard a voice that I should have recognized but did not, for it was in the wrong place. I turned. Striding toward me was John Day Apgar.

I left Nordhoff and met John at the beginning of the Row.

“I came down to do some legal work for the Days—my uncle, you remember him, don’t you? At the New Year’s party?”

I did not but said that I did. The Days are a merchant family who have lived in Washington since the days of President Monroe. “Real Antiques, as they say here.” John was dutifully proud. “I’ve also seen Mrs. Fish, who is a cousin of Hiram Apgar’s wife. She says they’re planning to give a dinner for you and Emma very soon.”

“That’s most kind of them.” We have received nothing from Mrs. Fish save a calling card, which Emma answered with one of her own.

John and I walked back to Willard’s. “This will be a nice surprise for Emma. You didn’t warn her, did you?”

“No. I wanted it to be a surprise.”

A surprise it was. Emma gave a fine impression of joy at the news when she came back for tea, to find me hard at work in our parlour.

“John wants to take us to Chamberlain’s for dinner.” This is the most distinguished of the city’s restaurants, more like a club than a restaurant, for Mr. Chamberlain only allows those who please him to gamble as well as dine in the mansion that was until recently the British legation, far out on a country road grandly known as Connecticut Avenue.

Emma said that she would be delighted. Then she poured us both tea and announced rather than asked, “You know about Puss, don’t you?”

“Nordhoff told me something, yes.”

“Poor girl. She’s been weeping her eyes out.”

“She confided in you?”

“She had to talk to someone, and I’m an outsider, which helps. And another woman, which helps, too. Besides, it will be no secret tomorrow. She told me the press has got the story.”