1876 (28 page)

All in all, I was somewhat amazed at the lack of formality, considering the awesome self-esteem of the American senator. But then, torn between maintaining a proud reserve suitable to one who has been elected to the highest legislature of the greatest nation the world has ever known and doing business with lobbyists, the practical tribune of the people prefers making himself easily accessible to those who want to give him money.

Today, of course, was a day like no other. The usual trafficking in favours had been replaced by speculations on the Belknap scandal and its possible ramifications.

A journalist held enthralled a group of senators with a description of Mr. Marsh’s testimony. Since I had seen and heard for myself what he was plainly unable to record accurately (journalism, not justice, ought to be portrayed blind, holding a loaded set of scales), I walked over to one of the swinging doors, hoping to get a glimpse of the Senate floor.

Suddenly a senator pushed past me; and sent me stumbling toward the high dais from which, constitutionally, the vice president presides. Since that personage died some months ago, his place is filled by various ranking senators. Today a large solemn man was in the chair, reading what looked to be a novel. So absorbed was he in his book that he did not once glance my way despite the noise of my entrance into politics.

Fortunately, I was well sponsored, cradled as I promptly was in the arms of Senator Roscoe Conkling. Whoever had pushed me through the swinging doors had done so just as Conkling was about to leave the floor; and into his powerful arms I fell.

I looked up at him; he down at me. The magnificent face, finally, broke into a smile. “ ‘Senator’ Schuyler, you seem in a great hurry!”

“I was pushed, sir. And stumbled. I must thank you for catching me.”

“I had no choice.” By then we were not only standing apart but as I am prone to do with tall men, I was beginning to make that necessary distance between us which minimizes the differences in height. Conkling was resplendent in a brocaded vest and white flannel trousers (in February!).

“A rambunctious lot, our lobbyists.”

“And much at home here, it would seem.”

“Too much at home.” Conkling shook his head gravely, deploring with that gesture the common corruption. “But now that you are a senator too, come look at your new home.”

Conkling took my arm. I hesitated. “Isn’t it forbidden?”

“Of course. Everything is forbidden. Otherwise there would be no pleasure.” With that he led me onto the Senate floor: a semicircle of desks faced the dais of the presiding officer. Daylight from a skylight above reflected coolly off grey walls and hangings. In the press gallery I saw a few familiar faces. The public galleries, however, were nearly empty. Those few who had come to observe the democratic process seemed mostly to be simple country people who behaved—quite rightly—as if they were at the circus; they chewed tobacco, shelled peanuts, ate popped corn, a newly contrived delicacy with the consistency and, I should think, the flavor of new paper currency.

Perhaps a dozen senators were at their desks, reading newspapers, chewing tobacco, chatting with one another as a noble-browed Southerner made an impassioned speech whose subject was the continuing minatory presence of Federal troops in certain of the Southern states a decade after the end of what he did not call the Civil War.

Conkling motioned for me to sit at an empty desk. He then sat at the desk just in front, graciously turning toward me the magnificent head and torso. “You are now seated at the desk where the late Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts was nearly beaten to death with a cane.”

“Which am I to anticipate? His ghost or that of his cane?”

Conkling’s smile revealed dingy teeth. “Both are long since exorcized. A superior man, Sumner, but unbelievably arrogant.” Curious how we always detect (and despise) in others our own faults. “When someone told General Grant that Senator Sumner did not believe in the Bible, General Grant said, ‘Only because he did not write it.’ ”

I laughed spontaneously, and with some surprise. “I had not thought General Grant a wit.”

“Oh, he is a shrewd, quiet, odd little man, and today”—Conkling exhaled a long breath—“he has been murdered.”

“By Mr. Marsh?”

Conkling nodded. “Any hope for a third term was just now butchered in that committee room.” He waved in the offending direction, like Edwin Forrest as Othello confronting Iago.

“Were you at the hearing?”

Conkling shook his head. “We’ve known for some days what would be said, and done.”

“Will Mr. Belknap be impeached?”

“I think
that
at least can be avoided.”

“But is he—are they not plainly guilty? I believe that over the years Mr. Marsh paid the Belknaps something like forty thousand dollars.”

“Yes.” But the word was not an affirmation. Simply a form of punctuation. “So much is for sale, Mr. Schuyler.”

“Apparently. I am told that to obtain a cadetship at West Point you must give your member of Congress five thousand dollars.”

“I believe the price is higher if he is from New York.” Conkling looked both amused and bleak. “Senate seats are also expensive. My admirers are said to have spent a quarter of a million dollars to get me this plain chair and table.” He slapped the desk in front of him.

I was taken aback, as he no doubt intended me to be. “But surely you, of all people, did not need money to be elected.”

“Senators are chosen by state legislatures and the legislators of New York are spoiled men—as well as spoilsmen.” He laughed at his own play on words. I laughed, too, a bit weakly, not at all sure what he was trying to tell me.

“Is the price too high then?” I was tentative.

“It is all money nowadays, Mr. Schuyler, and it is all too high. I do believe in my party, though.” The look of sincerity in those pale eyes was so perfectly convincing that I knew myself to be in the presence of a truly deceitful man. “I still believe in Grant, though God knows he makes it hard for us over here, with those war cronies of his ...”

“Does he know they steal?”

Conkling again gave me his sudden charming if dingy-toothed smile. “Oh, Mr. Schuyler! I know that you’ll put whatever I say into Jamie’s
Herald
just to help your friend—and mine too—good old Sam Tilden, who’ll use anything to beat us at the polls. Not that he’ll succeed, mind you. Not in the end.”

“If that is the case, Senator, and if you are his opponent, the country will be in good hands no matter what the result of the canvass.” I was every bit as dishonest as Conkling, who then proceeded to startle me.

“Spoken like a true minister of France, Mr. Schuyler. And may I say that if I should ever become the president, I’d have more than half a mind to appoint you myself.”

At that instant I could not think how in Heaven’s name my ambition was known to Roscoe Conkling, since only three people on this earth are aware of it and I cannot imagine Emma, Bigelow or Tilden mentioning the matter to anyone. My response was, I hope, cool; certainly not brilliant. “What little I do for the Government is simply
pro bono publico
.”

“That goes without saying, as the French say. Why, when General Grant wanted to appoint me Chief Justice two years ago, I told him, privately, more or less the same thing. How it was in the public interest that I stay on here, doing what I can to help his Administration.”

“And then, in due course, take
his
place, which is certainly more splendid than that of the late Chief Justice Chase.”

I put in the knife without remorse. Conkling had taken me for a fool. Having somehow learned my ambition, he thought that by appearing to equal Tilden’s offer I would then keep silent about his affair with the daughter of the late Chief Justice Chase. Yet I cannot imagine how I or anyone could make political use of this affair. Only the injured party, the mad little Senator Sprague, could make trouble. If he were to join forces with Blaine or Tilden in defeating his wife’s lover ... I must take all this up with Bigelow.

I shall never know how Conkling intended to respond, for just then a sergeant-at-arms came over to say that some Senate business was about to be transacted and that strangers must vanish.

We shook hands with every appearance of warmth. “I shall hope to see you soon, and the Princess, too, of course.”

A few minutes ago I asked Emma if she had ever mentioned to anyone my desire to be minister to France.

“Never, Papa! Not in this country of wolves—or I suppose, since we’re in Africa, it’s jackals.”

But when I told her what Conkling had said, she looked suddenly knowing, and somewhat abashed. “I have discussed it, Papa. I’m sorry. I told Kate Sprague.”

“My God!”

“It’s not that bad.” Emma was soothing; kissed my cheek (I have a slight fever this evening, and catarrh). “I mean, of course I should not have mentioned it to anyone, but Kate was in tears and had told me so much about her affairs that I thought a fair exchange no robbery.” Emma had shifted to French. “She told me that Mr. Conkling would marry her if she could ever have her husband legally put away. I don’t know what the process is, but ...”

“But there is still the very sane Mrs. Conkling, the gardener of Utica.”

“Well, that was what
I
said, too, and Kate got quite confused—for her. She is always so clear and hard. She spoke of divorce and—”

“And an end to the career of Mr. Conkling.”

“So I thought, and I know nothing of such matters. Anyway, Kate must have told Mr. Conkling that she had been indiscreet. I’m sorry.”

I cannot say that I like Conkling any better for his attempt to make me an ally or to disarm me but his fierce boldness is certainly most presidential—no, most imperial—and so
not
a proper style for this time, place.

Our evening with John’s relatives the Day family proved to be Apgar-ish, Confederate style. In fact, though their house is of brick, it looked suspiciously
brown
by the time the evening was over.

Rather like the grand New Yorkers, the Days and their fellow Antiques seldom speak of politics, ignoring as much as possible those transients, the politicians. But tonight even these authenticated—positively signed—Antiques are forced to admit that they were intrigued by the Belknap scandal. They had known the first Mrs. Belknap; thought the second Mrs. Belknap a trifle flashy; deplored corruption, naturally.

“There is really no one in this Administration you would want to know except poor Cousin Julia, and she just seems to ignore everything unpleasant.” Poor Cousin Julia is Mrs. Hamilton Fish, whose formal dinner in our honour has yet to materialize.

“A wretched business, politics,” declared Mr. Day, a stout man with a patch over one eye that gave him the look of a pirate. “A business for the bent.” To which a six-year-old nephew from somewhere in the South piped up, “Well, I want to be a senator!” Much laughter (this was before dinner); the boy was duly removed from the parlour, which was a perfect recreation of any one of the New York parlours of the Worthy Nine despite the African provenance.

Mrs. Day’s appearance might be improved by a patch over one eye or perhaps both eyes, since she suffers, poor woman, from some sort of lurid eye infection; she asked me the family question, “Why aren’t you at Wormley’s? It’s the only
nice
place, really. I always say that to stay at Willard’s is about as bad as staying in the Capitol itself for all the low types you see in the public rooms.”

I begged expediency. Emma smiled and smiled. She looked radiant and smiled yet again when John proposed a toast in her honour (I could not see the label on the wine but think it homemade: the source of tonight’s fever?).

“To my future wife!” John looked rather red and embarrassed as he made the toast, and I rather like him. He does indeed love Emma, and there is a lot to be said for such a strong emotion, even in marriage.

Then the ladies left the table, and John and I were entertained by ten gentlemen of Washington, Antiques to a man and entirely Southern in manner and accent, not to mention politics. “I would vote for a yellow dog if he was runnin’ as a Democrat,” said one, explaining not too flatteringly his support of Governor Tilden. Although politics does not much interest them, they are furious at Blaine, who recently made a speech on the necessity of denying civil rights to Jefferson Davis, the former president of the former Confederacy. As for the Republican party, they will abhor it “so long as a single Federal soldier stands with bayonet in hand before the capitol of any Southern state!” boomed one Antique.

It is curious that after ten years the late conflict is still so much on their minds. But then the signs of war are everywhere. The city is ringed by derelict forts, and all the flimsy, ugly buildings thrown up to house troops, the wounded, and government offices still temporarily stand. Then, too, the Days and their friends are Southerners, and Washington is the paradigm of a Southern city, African to the core, and a most peculiar place from which to conduct a war against the rest of the South. It is a wonder that Mr. Lincoln escaped assassination as long as he did. Yet I find it startling that, even now, Federal troops are still on duty in states like Louisiana, Florida and South Carolina.

“I have been invited to Newport, Rhode Island, this summer,” said John as the others discussed real estate, the one subject that enthralls the true Antique, since a good many of them live by selling or renting houses to the despised political transients.

“The Sanfords?”

“Yes. They—
she
said that you and Emma would be there in July. Is this true?”

“I think so.” Actually, I have not made up my mind. Although Emma and I would like to stay with Denise, neither of us is happy at the thought of playing audience day after day to William Sanford’s incorrigible performances. I would prefer to stay with Mrs. Astor, and visit Denise as much as possible. Unfortunately, despite hints, there has been no invitation from Mystic Rose or from loyal chamberlain. I told John that nothing was definite.

“My parents are very nervous.” And John laughed very nervously. “They think Newport, Rhode Island, almost as terrible a place as Long Branch, where the President goes.”