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    1876
    1876
    1876
    Ebook502 pages8 hours

    1876

    By Gore Vidal

    3.5/5

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    About this ebook

            
    The third volume of Gore Vidal's magnificent series of historical novels aimed at demythologizing the American past, 1876 chronicles the political scandals and dark intrigues that rocked the United States in its centennial year.
    ------Charles Schermerhorn Schuyler, Aaron Burr's unacknowledged son, returns to a flamboyant America after his long, self-imposed European exile. The narrator of Burr has come home to recoup a lost fortune by arranging a suitable marriage for his beautiful daughter, the widowed Princess d'Agrigente, and by ingratiating himself with Samuel Tilden, the favored presidential candidate in the centennial year. With these ambitions and with their own abundant charms, Schuyler and his daughter soon find themselves at the centers of American social and political power at a time when the fading ideals of the young republic were being replaced by the excitement of empire.
    ------"A glorious piece of writing," said Jimmy Breslin in Harper's. "Vidal can take history and make it powerful and astonishing." Time concurred: "Vidal has no peers at breathing movement and laughter into the historical past."
    ------With a new Introduction by the author.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherKnopf Doubleday Publishing Group
    Release dateAug 22, 2018
    ISBN9780525565772
    1876
    Author

    Gore Vidal

    Gore Vidal (1925–2012) was born at the United States Military Academy at West Point. His first novel, Williwaw, written when he was 19 years old and serving in the army, appeared in the spring of 1946. He wrote 23 novels, five plays, many screenplays, short stories, well over 200 essays, and a memoir.

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    Reviews for 1876

    3.5/5

    211 ratings7 reviews

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    • 4/5
      I finished the book 2 days after the still undecided 2020 US election. Parts of 1876 mirrored the current situation (too close for comfort). Interesting read about an important election often brushed over in American history. A good sign of a good history book is if I ended up googling lots of facts and figures. I did that a lot in this book.
    • 4/5
      My first book by Gore Vidal and I thought it very insightful, humorous, and informative. Charles Schuyler and his widowed daughter, Emma, has returned to the United States after spending thirty years in France. Things have changed! Schuyler has worked as a journalist in France for American papers; now he is returning to find his daughter a new husband. They both receive welcomes from the elite of New York City and are invited to all the best parties. Emma soon finds herself pursued by the boring, proper, and financially secure John Apgar who she agrees to marry because she does like him - nothing about love ever enters the picture. Charles meanwhile writes free lance for a variety of papers including the New York Times and the NY Harold. A cast of all of New York's best plays a part.

      President Grant(Republican) is in office and while he was a Civil War hero, his administration is raft with corruption and he is no longer popular much to his chagrin. Samuel Tilden is predicted to be the Democratic candidate for the election of 1876 but the Republican nominee is up for grabs. Politicians, socialites, journalists, senators, and military veterans all have their ideas.

      Gore does an excellent job of telling the story of the very corrupt election of 1876 in a thoroughly enjoyable way. Although, I must admit many of the political characters become confusing toward the end of the book. This is the first election where the popular vote which was won by Tilden was overturned by the electorial vote.

      A great book to read in light of today's political scene - corruption was everywhere as everyone grabbed for their bit of power or money. Many of Charles Schuyler's thoughts could apply today.
      Interesting book. Makes me want to read more Vidal.
    • 4/5
      Historical fiction about the presidential election of 1876, full of corruption, threatening chaos and the destruction of the country. It was engagingly written with a vividly presented cast of characters.
    • 4/5
      Very enjoyable. Vidal is in his element in 1876 - in contrast to Lincoln, where his admiration for Abe made the book slightly dry for my liking, almost everybody involved in the events of this novel is corrupt, fatuous or otherwise awful and he's free to be as waspish as he likes.

      I haven't been swept up by the Narratives of Empire novels as much as as Julian or Creation (at least not so far), but this is good fun. I look forward to the next instalment.
    • 5/5
      i loved this book. not the events that were taking place but that would be because it's crap, but it is also familiar of the bush/gore election. the thing to love about vidal is the fact he won't put anything in quotation marks that can't be physically backed up. it's amazing how history repeats itself. if this has got you wanting to read it then, you will learn so much from this book. it's basically set in 1876 with the campaign of tilden vs hayes in the presidential election. garfield plays a enough of a part i want to read about him to see what kind of a dick he really was, after this book i can't believe that he wasn't. grant and hayes are appalling, i learned alot and it was excellently done.
    • 4/5
      More stellar historical fiction from Gore Vidal. This follow up to Burr, takes us to the pivotal year of 1876. The fictional Carlie Schuyer return to America in time for the Centennial and the election between Hayes and Tilden. Full of real life characters and place, reading this is like being there.
    • 4/5
      I remember liking this one more that Vidal's Burr when I read them in the same month. Vidal's Lincoln is still my favorite of his.

    Book preview

    1876 - Gore Vidal

    One

    1

    THAT IS NEW YORK. I pointed to the waterfront just ahead as if the city were mine. Ships, barges, ferry boats, four-masted schooners were shoved like a child’s toys against a confused jumble of buildings quite unfamiliar to me, a mingling of red brick and brownstone, of painted wood and dull granite, of church towers that I had never seen before and odd bulbous-domed creations of—cement? More suitable for the adornment of the Golden Horn than for my native city.

    "At least I think it is New York. Perhaps it is Brooklyn. I am told that the new Brooklyn is marvellously exotic, with a thousand churches."

    Gulls swooped and howled in our wake as the stewards on a lower deck threw overboard the remains of the large breakfast fed us at dawn.

    No, said Emma. I’ve just left the captain. This is really New York. And how old, how very old it looks! Emma’s excitement gave me pleasure. Of late neither of us has had much to delight in, but now she looks a girl again, her dark eyes brilliant with that all-absorbed, grave, questioning look which all her life has meant: I must know what this new thing is and how best to use it. She responds to novelty and utility rather than to beauty. I am the opposite; thus father and daughter balance each other.

    Grey clouds alternated with bands of bright blue sky; sharp wind from the northwest; sun directly in our eyes, which meant that we were facing due east from the North River, and so this was indeed the island of my birth and not Brooklyn to the south nor Jersey City at our back.

    I took a deep breath of sea-salt air; smelt the city’s fumes of burning anthracite mingled with the smell of fish not lately caught and lying like silver ingots in a passing barge.

    So old? I had just realized what Emma had said.

    But yes. Emma’s English is almost without accent, but occasionally she translates directly from the French, betraying her foreignness. But then I am the foreign one, the American who has lived most of his life in Europe while Emma has never until now left that old world where she was born thirty-five years ago in Italy, during a cyclone that uprooted half the trees in the garden of our villa and caused the frightened midwife nearly to strangle the newborn with the umbilical cord. Whenever I see trees falling before the wind, hear thunder, observe the sea furious, I think of that December day and the paleness of the mother’s face in vivid contrast to the redness of her blood, that endless haemorrhaging of blood.

    (I think that a little mémoire in the beautiful lyric style of the above might do very well for the Atlantic Monthly.)

    Emma shivered in the wind. Yes, old. Dingy. Like Liverpool.

    Waterfronts are the same everywhere. But there’s nothing old here. I recognize nothing. Not even City Hall, which ought to be over there where that marble tomb is. See? With all the columns…

    Perhaps you’ve forgotten. It’s been so long.

    I feel like Rip Van Winkle. Already I could see the beginning of my first piece for the New York Herald (unless I can interest Mr. Bonner at the New York Ledger; he has been known to pay a thousand dollars for a single piece). The New Rip Van Winkle, or How Charles Schermerhorn Schuyler Sailed to Europe Almost Half a Century Ago… And stayed there (asleep?). Now he’s come home, to report to President Martin Van Buren who sent him abroad on a diplomatic mission, to compare foreign notes with his friend Washington Irving (who invented him after all), to dine with the poet Fitz-Greene Halleck: only to find all of them, to his astonishment, long dead.

    Must stop at this point.

    These pages are to be a quarry, no more. A collection of day-to-day impressions of my new old country.

    Titles: The United States in the Year of the Centennial.

    Traveller’s Return. Old New York: A Knickerbocker’s Memories. Recollections of the Age of Jackson and Van Buren… Must try these out on publishers and lecture agents.

    —

    At this moment—midnight, December 4, 1875—I am somewhat staggered at the prospect of trying in some way to encompass with words this new world until now known to me only at the farthest remove. I can of course go on and on about the past, write to order of old things by the yard; and happily there is, according to my publisher, Mr. E. P. Dutton, a considerable market for my wares whenever I am in the reminiscent mood. But the real challenge, of course, is to get the sense of the country as it is today—two, three, four times more populous than it was when I left in 1837. Yet, contemplating what I saw of New York this afternoon, I begin only now to get the range as I sit, perspiring, in the parlour of our hotel suite while dry heated air comes through metal pipes in sudden blasts like an African sirocco.

    None of the Americans I have met in Europe over the past four decades saw fit to prepare me for the opulence, the grandeur, the vulgarity, the poverty, the elegance, the awful crowded abundance of this city, which, when I last saw it, was a minor seaport with such small pretensions that a mansion was a house like Madame Jumel’s property on the Haarlem—no, Harlem—no, Washington Heights—a building that might just fill the ballroom of one of those palaces the rich are building on what is called Fifth Avenue, in my day a country road wandering through the farms north of Potter’s Field, later to be known as the Parade Ground, and later still as Washington Square Park, now lined with rows of old houses containing the heirs of the New York gentry of my youth.

    In those days, of course, the burghers lived at the south end of the island between the Battery and Broadway where now all is commercial, or worse. I can recall when St. Mark’s Place was as far north as anyone would want to live. Now, I am told, a rich woman has built herself a cream-coloured French palace on Fifty-seventh Street! opposite the newly completed Central Park (how does one complete a park?).

    A steward hurried across the deck to Emma. "C’est un monsieur; il est arrivé, pour Madame la Princesse."

    Everyone told us that of all the Atlantic ships those of the French line were the most comfortable, and so the Pereire proved to be, despite winter gales that lasted from Le Havre to the mid-Atlantic. But the captain was charming; and most impressed by Emma’s exalted rank even though her title is Napoleonic and the second French empire is now the third French republic. Nevertheless, the captain gave us a most regal series of staterooms for only a hundred and fifty dollars (the usual cost of two first-class passages is two hundred dollars).

    Our fellow passengers proved to be so comfortably dull that I was able during the eight and a half days of the crossing to complete my article for Harper’s Monthly, The Empress Eugénie in Exile, filled with facts provided by the Emperor’s cousin, my beloved Princess Mathilde who of course detests her. Conforming to current American taste, the tone of the piece is ecstatic and somewhat fraudulent.

    But the Empress has always been most kind to Emma and to me, although she once tactlessly said in my presence that literary men give her the same sense of ennui as explorers! Well, the writer is not unlike the explorer. We, too, are searching for lost cities, rare tigers, the sentence never before written.

    Emma’s visitor was John Day Apgar. We found him in the main salon. Rather forlornly, he stood amongst the crowd of first-class passengers, all looking for children, maids, valets, trunks.

    Quite a number of the men were having what the Americans so colorfully refer to as an eye-opener at the marble-topped bar.

    Princess! Mr. Apgar bowed low over Emma’s hand; his style is not bad for an American. But then John, as I call him, was for a year at our embassy in Paris. Now he is practising law in New York.

    Mr. Apgar. You are as good as your word. Emma gave him her direct dark gaze, not quite as intense as the one she gave New York City, but then John, unlike the city, is a reasonably well known and familiar object to her. I’ve a carriage waiting for you at Pier Fifty. Porters—everything. Forgive me, Mr. Schuyler. John bowed to me; shook hands.

    How did you get on board? I was curious. Aren’t we still in the harbour?

    I came out on the tender. With all sorts of people who have come to greet you.

    Me? I was genuinely surprised. I had telegraphed Jamie Bennett at the Herald that I was arriving on the fourth but I could hardly expect that indolent youth to pay me a dawn visit in the middle of the Hudson River. Who else knew of my arrival?

    The captain enlightened us. The American newspaper press is arrived on board to interview Monsieur Schuyler. The French pronunciation of Schuyler (Shwee-lair) is something I shall never grow used to or accept. Because of it, I feel an entirely different person in France from what I am in America. Question: Am I different? Words, after all, define us.

    How extraordinary! Emma takes a low view of journalists despite the fact that my livelihood from now on must come from my pen, from writing for newspapers, magazines, anything and everything. The panic of 1873 wiped out my capital, such as it was. Worse, Emma’s husband left her in a similar situation when he saw fit to die five years ago while ingesting a tournedos Rossini at the restaurant Lucas Carton.

    Whether it was a heart attack or simply beef with foie gras lodged in the windpipe, we shall never know, since neither of us was present when the Prince d’Agrigente so abruptly departed this world during a late supper with his mistress. It was the scandal of Paris during the three days before the war with Prussia broke out. After that, Paris had other things to talk about. We did not. To this day none of us understands how it was that the Prince died owing the fortune that we thought he had possessed.

    With the slightly shady pomp of a chamberlain at the imperial court, the captain led us across the salon to a small parlor filled with gilt chairs à la Louis Quinze where, waiting for me, was the flower of the youth of the New York press. That is to say, the new inexperienced journalists who are assigned to meet celebrities aboard ships in the harbour and, through trial and error (usually more of the second than of the first), learn the art of interviewing, of misdescribing in sprightly language odd fauna.

    Twenty, thirty faces stared at me from a variety of long shabby overcoats, some open in response to the warmth of the cabin, others still tightly shut against the morning’s icy wind. We have been told a hundred times today that this has been the coldest winter in memory. What winter is not?

    The captain introduced me to the journalists—obviously he is well-pleased that the reduction in our fare has been so dramatically and immediately justified. I sang for all our suppers; spoke glowingly of the splendour of the French line.

    Questions were hurled at me whilst a near-sighted artist scribbled a drawing of me. I caught a glimpse of one of his renderings when he flipped back the first page of his paper block: a short stout pigeon of a man with three chins lodged in an exaggerated high-winged collar (yet mine is what collars should be), and of course the snubbed nose, square jaw of a Dutchman no longer young. Dear God! Why euphemize? Of a man of sixty-two, grown very old.

    Thin man from the New York Herald. Indolent youth from the New York Graphic. Sombre dwarf from The New York Times. The Sun, Mail, World, Evening Post, Tribune were also present but not immediately identified. Also half a dozen youths from the weeklies, the monthlies, the biweeklies, the bimonthlies…oh, New York, the United States is the Valhalla of journalism—if Valhalla is the right word. Certainly, there are more prosperous newspapers and periodicals in the United States than in all of Europe put together. As a result, today’s men of letters come from the world of journalism, and never entirely leave it—unlike my generation, who turned with great reluctance to journalism in order to make a desperate, poor living of the sort that now faces me.

    "What, Mr. Schuyler, are your impressions of the United States today?" The dwarf from The New York Times held his notebook before him like a missal—studying it, not me.

    I shall know better when I go ashore. Pleased chuckles from the overcoats that had begun to give off a curious musty odour of dirty wool dampened by salt spray.

    Handkerchief to face, Emma stood at the door, ready for flight. But John Apgar appeared to be entirely fascinated by the Fourth Estate in all its woolly splendour.

    How long has it been, sir, since you were last in America? A note of challenge from the World: it is not good form to live outside God’s own country. "I left in the year 1837. That was the year that everyone went bankrupt. Now I am back and everyone has again gone bankrupt. There is a certain symmetry, don’t you think?

    This went down well enough. But why had I left?

    Because I had been appointed American vice consul at Antwerp. By President Van Buren.

    I thought that this would sound impressive, but it provoked no response. I am not sure which unfamiliar phrase puzzled them more: vice consul or President Van Buren. But then Americans have always lived entirely in the present, and this generation is no different from mine except that now there is more of a past for them to ignore.

    Our republic (soon to be in its centennial year) was in its vivacious sixties when I left, the same age that I am now.

    Although my life has spanned nearly two-thirds the life of the United States, it seems but a moment in time. Equally curious is Emma’s first impression of New York: How old it looks, she said. Yet there is hardly a building left from my youth. As I spoke to the press I did finally recognize through the window—porthole—the familiar spire of Trinity Church. At least no new fire has managed to destroy that relic of the original city.

    (Noted later: my familiar spire, according to John Day Apgar was torn down in ’39. The current unfamiliar spire dates from the early forties.)

    Questions came quickly. My answers were as sharp as I could make them, considering how tactful, even apologetic one must be for having stayed away so long. And if the newspaper reports of my return prove to be amiable, I will find it easy—I pray—to acquire a lecture agent, not to mention magazine commissions from—from anyone who will pay!

    Where have you been living, sir?

    For the last few years in Paris. I came there—

    Were you in Paris during the war, during the German occupation?

    I restrained myself; was modest; agréable. "Why, yes, in fact I wrote a little book about my experiences. Perhaps you know the title. Paris Under the Commune?"

    Either my publishers have exaggerated the success of the book or journalists do not read books or even reviews of books. Yet Harper’s Weekly referred to Paris Under the Commune as a terrifying and entirely fascinating eyewitness account of the siege of Paris and the rising of the Commune, all recorded with that celebrated gift for detail which marks any utterance from Mr. Charles Schermerhorn Schuyler’s pen. I recall this notice by heart, largely because the only utterance I have ever heard my pen make is a squeak.

    The man from the Sun looked very pleased with himself as he asked, You yourself, sir, are not a Communist?

    No, no, dear boy. My voice filled suddenly with catarrh as I deliberately mimicked old Washington Irving at his most gracious. I am a simple American.

    Then why have you lived so long abroad? The Graphic.

    When I was an American consul in Italy, I married a Swiss lady—

    Is that her? The dwarf looked over his missal at Emma; in fact, pointed that object at her as if he were an imp from hell with a summons.

    My wife is dead. She died at Paris some years ago. She—

    "What is your name, miss?" The World to Emma.

    "Je ne comprends pas, monsieur." Emma’s face was white, her full lips a straight line of irritability. The French words snapped in the room like a whip.

    My daughter is the Princess d’Agrigente. Much confusion as we worked as one to get the spelling right. Finally, a compromise: in English she is the Princess of Agrigento. She is a widow— I began.

    "What did the Prince do?" From the Express.

    Emma started to answer, furiously, in English, but a gesture from me stopped her. Raptly John Apgar stared at us, as if at the theatre.

    The Prince had many interests. His father, as I am sure you all know, was a marshal of France and served under the first Napoleon. He was ennobled in Italy. After Waterloo, when Napoleon was defeated— For once I was spelling out too much. Impatiently they indicated that Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo was known to them.

    Got any children, Princess?

    Two, I answered quickly. In Paris. With their grandmother. The dowager Princess. Who is charging us—that sovereign bitch from hell—five thousand francs a year for their support, almost a thousand dollars: the entire income Emma realizes from what remains of her husband’s estate. Need I say—yes, I do need to say, even to this journal where it is perfectly irrelevant, that I have never in my life met such a terrible woman as Emma’s mother-in-law. According to legend, she was a prostitute when Lieutenant du Pont, the future marshal and Prince d’Agrigente, met her, but I doubt the story, as she must have been even then as plain—and odoriferous—as an abattoir on an August day.

    Are you planning to write about the change in New York since you lived here? This from the charming thin man of the Herald, who knows me as a valued contributor.

    Indeed. I look forward to a tour of the States. East and West. North and South. I shall attend and write about the Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia when it opens—

    "For the Herald?" Again from the most amiable thin youth.

    Where else? Equal amiability from me—if not total sincerity, for I shall sell my wares to the highest bidder.

    Are you related to Mrs. William Astor?

    This was as startling a question as I have ever been asked. Certainly not! I fear I was too sharp.

    The mystery was promptly solved: apparently Mrs. Astor’s maiden name was the same as my mother’s—Schermerhorn—something I had not known, although even at Paris we have often been told by amused and bemused travellers of the grandeur of Mrs. Astor’s receptions, of the gorgeous splendour of that New York society which she dominates, having managed to unseat her sister-in-law Mrs. John Jacob Astor III who outranks her, at least according to primogeniture, for J.J. Astor III is the eldest son of that family, and its head.

    Once, a half-century ago, I saw the original J.J. Astor crawling along lower Broadway; the old man wore an ermine-lined coat and was supported by my old friend—and his secretary—the poet Fitz-Greene Halleck. All dead.

    Questions about my books. But not many. According to the press, I am a famous author in the United States, but this set of overcoats was not certain just why I am celebrated. On the other hand, they are all familiar with my journalism, not only my pieces for Jamie Bennett’s Herald but also those for the Evening Post, where my literary career began. I am the New York press’s perennial authority on European matters.

    Politics. Sooner or later that subject always comes up with Americans.

    What did I think of the recent arrest and imprisonment of Boss Tweed, who stole millions of dollars from the city of New York whilst building the lavish new Court House. Piously I deplored corruption.

    What did I think of General U.S. Grant, whose second term as president is due to end in a year’s time?

    I was wary. The corruption of General Grant’s Administration is a matter of some poignancy to me. My capital was administered by the banking house of Jay Cooke, which collapsed in the fall of 1873, bringing on a panic whose effects are still with us—as my capital is not.

    Certain Wall Street criminals, among them Jay Gould and Jim Fiske—how well I know their names!—in an attempt to corner gold, brought on a thousand bankruptcies. Whether or not General Grant himself was involved in any of this is a disputed point. Certainly he is known to take large gifts from men like Gould and Fiske. If Grant is not himself a criminal he is a fool. Yet the Republican party protects him, cherishes him, is loath even to let him go now after two terms.

    Do you think General Grant will want a third term? From the Times, a newspaper particularly devoted to the Grant Administration.

    Since I have never met the General, I can hardly say. But…

    Deliberately I set out to make—well, not my fortune but at least a place for myself where I can survive without fear of poverty the few years left me. But, I repeated, as you know, I am a Democrat, of the Jackson-Van Buren persuasion…

    This caused some interest. There was a marked coolness from the reporters representing the Republican interest (the majority, I fear), but keen sympathy from the others.

    Do you favour Governor Tilden for the Democratic nomination?

    Favour him! All my hopes are based upon that fragile figure obtaining the presidency next year. "Indeed I do. I am not, of course, au courant…" Mistake to use French but the phrase was out.

    Odd. In France I think only in French. Now—in this hotel room—what language do I think in? English? No. A mélange!

    I hardly know as much about New York’s affairs as you gentlemen, but I do know that Mr. Tilden’s breaking up of the Tweed ring so pleased the honest people of the state that last year they made him governor. After all, he has stopped the rich stealing from the poor—

    But that sounds communist, sir. From the Times.

    I had no idea that honesty and communism were the same. This evoked some applause. I find it fascinating that communism should so distress the overcoats. Obviously the uprising in Paris frightened the New York burghers—certainly it frightened us Parisians when the Communards seized the city as the Germans withdrew; even more frightening, however, was the revenge of the burghers, who butchered untold thousands for being Communards. I myself saw a child of five slaughtered in a street of Mont Rouge. The world revolution that began in 1848 is not yet finished.

    At this point I raised my own banner: When I last saw Mr. Tilden in Geneva, two summers ago— The excitement that I had meant to create was now palpable: the overcoats positively steamed. The desultory interview with the expatriate author of successful books unknown to the newspaper press now came alive.

    "You are a friend of the Governor?"

    Hardly. But we do correspond. We were first introduced by Mr. Gallatin, who lives in Geneva. Patiently I spelled the name; explained that Gallatin’s father had been secretary of the treasury under Jefferson.

    I was struck by Mr. Tilden’s, by the Governor’s, extraordinary brilliance, by his intellectual grasp of every subject that he chooses to consider. This was true enough. Samuel J. Tilden is indeed a most intelligent if narrow man, and though of a cold and formal temperament, he is by no means wholly lacking in charm.

    We dined nearly every day for a week on a terrace overlooking Lac Léman. Sometimes we were joined by Gallatin, whose bright European realism was often too much for the dour Americanism of S.J. Tilden.

    At one point Tilden suddenly began to describe in detail precisely how he had destroyed Tweed and his ring, which included governors, judges, mayors, aldermen. As he spoke, Tilden’s pale, old child’s face grew flushed and the grey dull eyes suddenly reflected the lake’s blue; for an instant, he was nearly handsome in his animation.

    Gallatin and I (and a half dozen others) listened to the weak but compelling voice with fascination. But then Tilden struck for us Europeans (yes, I am one after so many years) a peculiarly hypocritical American note. To think, he said to Gallatin, what has happened to our country since your father’s day! Since the time of Jefferson!

    Gallatin was astonished. But surely everything is so much better now, Mr. Tilden. The country is so big, so very rich… This was some weeks before the panic. Railroads everywhere. Great manufactories. Floods of cheap labour from poor old Europe. America is El Dorado now, whilst in my father’s time it was just a nation of farmers—and not very good farmers at that.

    You misunderstood me, Mr. Gallatin. Tilden’s sallow cheeks now each contained a smudge of brick-coloured red. "I speak of corruption. Of judges for sale. Of public men dividing amongst themselves the people’s money. Of newspapers bought, bought by political bosses. Even the Post. Tilden nodded gravely to me, knowing that I often wrote for that paper. The Post took a retainer from Tweed. That’s what I mean by the change in our country, this worship of the Golden Calf, of the almighty dollar, this terrible corruption."

    I knew Tilden for only a week, but in that time this was the nearest to passion I had heard him come. In general he was—is—a very cold fish, as they say.

    Gallatin’s black eyebrows lifted, simulating amazement. You know, Mr. Tilden, I used to talk a great deal to my father about the early days of the republic and…well, I do not mean to confound you, sir, but what you describe has always been the rule with us. Certainly in New York we have always given one another bribes and, whenever possible, taken the public money.

    Was Tilden shocked? He has the lawyer’s gift of suddenly ceasing advocacy when unexpected evidence is submitted. The spots of colour left his cheeks. He added water to the splendid Rhône wine in his glass. I noticed that he has a tremor of the hand like mine.

    Then, But surely, Mr. Gallatin, all this changed when the founder of our party, when Mr. Jefferson, was elected president?

    Nothing ever changes, Mr. Tilden. People are people.

    Is it a trick of my memory that at that moment the letters were brought to the table that assured Tilden of the Democratic nomination for the governorship of New York? I daresay I have moved things about in my memory. In any case, it was on that holiday in Switzerland—Tilden’s first trip to Europe—that the summons came.

    I have no intention of being the candidate for governor. Tilden was firm as he stood in front of his hotel—trunks, companions, porters, chasseurs all about him.

    You must! I said. If not for the people, for the sake of our friend John Bigelow.

    I got something very much like a smile on that. John Bigelow is perhaps Tilden’s only friend. In the thirties the three of us were aspiring lawyers in the city. Both Tilden and Bigelow are a few years younger than I. In those days I did not know Tilden, but I often used to see John Bigelow at the Café Français, usually in the company of my friend Fitz-Greene Halleck. I seem to recall when Halleck and I played at billiards in the back room, Bigelow—a handsome, tall youth from upstate—was moderately disapproving. Once Bigelow shyly asked me to help him write for the newspaper press, and I did.

    The ultra-Republican Times wanted to know more about my links with Tilden. Slight. Slight, I answered truthfully. But I pray that soon our presently slight connection will be as links of steel.

    I have, at his request, written him occasionally on foreign affairs. This is true. I cannot say he precisely requested my reports, but he has shown great interest in them, particularly during the last six months when it has become apparent to everyone that he will be not only the Democratic candidate for president in ’76 but the president as well, assuming that General Grant does not seek a third term.

    A sudden thud like an earthquake’s tremor ended my encounter with the press: the Pereire had docked. The overcoats fled. Emma’s disgust was as plain as John Apgar’s awe.

    I took Emma’s arm. "C’est nécessaire, petite."

    "Comme tu veux, Papa."

    I have not taken Emma into my confidence—on aesthetic grounds. She has had no real experience of the struggle that most lives are, and I would keep her innocent. My wife had a small fortune; and a family Schloss in Unterwalden, Switzerland. When both were lost to us at her death, Emma was safely (I thought) married to Henri d’Agrigente and for a dozen years the two lived splendidly, amassing debts in the Hôtel d’Agrigente, Boulevard de Courcelles.

    Meanwhile, I did quite well with my writing; was able to support in some comfort one and a half (the half being the cost of a mistress in a good arrondissement). Then the shock of Paris falling, of Henri dying, of the banker Jay Cooke failing; and my ruin.

    Now I must live by such wits as I have left. But Emma must be spared as much as possible the pain of seeing her old father like some once-beautiful poule de luxe of literature try once again to ply his wares on foot, as it were, in streets where once triumphantly he rode.

    Well, no self-pity. The world is not easy. I only curse my luck that I am not young. At thirty I would have had no qualms. I could have conquered this city of New York in a week, like Tamburlaine when he took Persepolis!

    2

    JOHN DAY APGAR’S VICTORIA was at the pier as well as a curiously shaped wagon decorated with the gold legend THE FIFTH AVENUE HOTEL—To take the trunks, sir, according to its driver, a withered son of Cork.

    Amongst the thousand and one bits of information I have in the last few hours received: more than half the city’s population of a million is foreign-born. Most are from Ireland (as in my day) and Germany. But representatives of the other countries are to be found in ever-increasing numbers. Whole districts of the lower island are devoted to Italians, Poles, Hebrews, Greeks, while the once charming Mott and Pell streets are now entirely occupied by Chinese! I cannot wait to explore this new world, more like a city from the Arabian Nights than that small staid English-Dutch town or village of my youth.

    As the victoria left the pier and entered Orton Street, John Apgar indicated tattered beggars, holding out their hands. We are known as the almshouse of Europe. He spoke with a mechanical bitterness, no longer even hearing the phrase on his own tongue, for everyone, I gather, uses it.

    I suppose to the native New Yorker so many newcomers must be disturbing, particularly when there is not much work for them since the panic of ’73, obliging them to turn to—what else? crime. But for the old New Yorkers with money this constant supply of cheap labour must be a singular joy. One can hire an excellent cook for eighteen dollars a month; a lady’s maid for twelve dollars. Emma and I have been debating whether or not to indulge her in a lady’s maid. Apparently we are the only occupants of a suite in the Fifth Avenue Hotel without personal servants.

    The drive from the pier to the hotel was—well, Rip Van Winkle-ish. I have run out of epithets; and must remember not to use to death that hackneyed image.

    I asked the driver to take us through Washington Square Park and then up the celebrated Fifth Avenue.

    You will doubtless find the avenue much changed. John’s politeness is pleasing, but his gift for saying only the obvious makes him something less than the perfect companion. As a son-in-law, however, he has possibilities.

    The law office of the Apgar Brothers in Chambers Street is prosperous. But I was not heartened to learn last summer in Paris that there are nine brothers and that our John is but the third son of the third brother. I think Emma regards him much as I do, but then we usually see things in exactly the same way—so much so that we seldom need to speak our thoughts, particularly on such a delicate subject as the right husband for her.

    Properly speaking, there was no Fifth Avenue in my day. A few brave souls were building houses north of the Parade Ground, as we called Washington Square. But they were thought eccentric, unduly fearful of the summer cholera, of smallpox in the lower island. I spoke without interest in what I was saying; looked this way and that; could hardly take it all in.

    A white sun made vivid each detail of this new city, but gave no warmth. Beside me, Emma shivered beneath the fur rug, as enthralled as I.

    Everywhere crowds of vehicles—carts, barouches, victorias, brightly painted horsecars, not to mention other and more sinister kinds of transport: when we crossed Sixth Avenue at Cornelia Street, I gasped and Emma gave a cry, as a train of cars drawn by a steam engine hurtled with deafening sound over our heads at thirty miles an hour!

    The horses shied, whinnied; the driver swore. Like a dark rain, ashes fell from the elevated railway above our heads. Emma’s cheek was smudged. Happily, we were not set afire by the bright coals that erupted from the steam engine, falling like miniature comets to the dark avenue below.

    Then the cars were gone. The nervous horses were persuaded to cross the avenue and enter the quiet precinct of Washington Square Park.

    My God! Emma put handkerchief to cheek; did not care to refine her language for Mr. John Day Apgar, who was more thrilled than not by our adventure.

    I’m sorry. I ought to have warned you. There’s really nothing like it in the world, is there?

    I’m happy to say, no, there is not. Emma’s colour was now high; she looked uncommonly youthful—the sudden fright, the cold wind.

    I did not repeat my now constant and, even to me, interminable refrain: How things have changed. Yet in my time (was ever any time mine?) Sixth Avenue was just a name to describe a country road that crossed isolated farms and thick marshes, where my father once took me duck shooting.

    As we turned into Washington Park, I vowed I would not again make any reference to the way things were—except in print for money. More to the point, it is always difficult to discern whether or not one entertains or bores the young, since their politeness requires them to appear at all times attentive. I should know. In my youth I made my way in the world by using the old without conscience. Is there retribution awaiting me now? In the guise of some young listener smiling his betrayal as I maunder on.

    I must stop this. Not dwell so much upon the past. The present is too exciting, and the small time left me must be well used to re-make Emma’s fortune. At this instant I feel that nothing can stop us if I do not perish first of the heat.

    Heat billows from the pipes, from the burning coals in the grate of the marble fireplace. I have tried and failed to open the parlour window. I positively gasp for air. But I am in my dressing gown and do not want to call a servant. Emma sleeps in her room.

    Two bedrooms, parlour, and—remarkably—a private bath all for thirty dollars a day. Three meals are included, of course, whilst a fourth, supper, can be had for an additional two dollars and fifty cents. Yet even at this rate we will be penniless in three months. But the gamble is worth it. This hotel is the city’s grandest; everyone of importance can be seen in the lobby, the reception rooms, the bars. So this must be our El Dorado, to be mined with care.

    Curious, my pulse rate has almost doubled at the thought of money—and its absence!

    I have just taken an opiate, a powerful laudanum mixed for me in Paris. So now, sleepily, I write rather as one dreams, not knowing what is real or not.

    Washington Square Park is as handsome, in its way, as London’s Green Park, with comfortable houses side by side, as neat and as unimaginative as a row of new American novels. In fact, the monotony of the architecture in the city’s better sections takes some getting used to. But many of the newer buildings are in a different, more grandiose and—let me admit it—for me, more pleasing style.

    We left Washington Park and began the ascent of Fifth Avenue, a pleasant boulevard not so wide or grand as the Champs-Élysées but pleasing enough, with tall ailanthus trees at regular intervals. Again, however, the avenue is lined for the most part with those sombre houses of dullest brownstone.

    "Do all your houses look alike?" Emma was less than enchanted by fabled Fifth Avenue.

    They are dreadful, aren’t they? John’s year in Paris had made him critical of what, I seem to recall in the early days of our acquaintance, he once boasted of. You’d never recognize New York now, he would say to me. It’s every bit as fine as Paris.

    "But things are changing uptown," he added.

    Not that your houses aren’t…appealing. Emma smiled at him. And obviously comfortable.

    Oh, they’re that. This part—John indicated the section between Washington Square Park and Madison Square at Twenty-third Street—is where the old families live.

    Like the Apgars? Emma was mischievous.

    John blushed; his long face is rather like that of one of those llamas from the highlands of Peru. Well, we’re not old in the city. We’re from Philadelphia, actually. The Brothers didn’t move to New York until just before I was born.

    But you live in this quarter?

    Right along there. John pointed east, to Tenth Street. That’s my father’s house. I’m staying there while looking for a place of my own—of course.

    Since the conversation was now verging on the indelicate, I changed the subject, asked him about certain landmarks of my youth. No, he had never heard of the City Hotel; so that once famous center of the town has obviously been long since razed. I told him that it was the Fifth Avenue Hotel of its time.

    I thought the Astor House was.

    As I heard the name I had a sudden crise of memory…a bright sultry summer afternoon when the walls of the Astor House were going up and a block of stone fell into the street, nearly killing a passer-by. Now the Astor House, once the leading hostelry of the city, isn’t what it used to be. Convenient for business people but too far downtown for the fashionables.

    Today the center of the city is Madison Square and I must say its showiness provides a certain relief after the dull mile of Fifth Avenue brownstones we had driven so slowly past. I duly note that today’s uptown traffic is every bit as bad as it used to be on lower Broadway.

    One enters the square at the point where Broadway crosses Fifth Avenue, and immediately the eye is taken with the Fifth Avenue Hotel, a six-storey white marble

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