Mrs. Grant and Madame Jule

by Jennifer Chiaverini

  The same stagecoach that had brought Orvil to Cincinnati waited to carry them north. As they rumbled along out of the city, past blocks of handsome buildings that gave way to rolling hills and sweeping meadows, Orvil shared all the news from home—and Julia felt her apprehensions rising with every mile.

  The stagecoach halted at a tavern not far from the Grant family home in Bethel. Word of Ulys’s arrival with his new bride must have spread swiftly, for they were still organizing their luggage when a thin, sharp-featured, handsome man not much older than Ulys appeared and greeted him with a cordial handshake. “This is my brother Samuel Simpson Grant,” Ulys introduced him. Julia hid her surprise as she shook his hand; in the Dent family, siblings embraced.

  Simpson helped them carry their luggage across the street to the Grant residence. Julia’s heart thumped as Ulys opened the door for her, and she took a quick, steadying breath before she crossed the threshold. Her gaze took in first the faces that promptly turned her way—the grave, appraising eyes, the silent, expressionless mouths—and then the subdued simplicity of the furnishings, mirrored in the occupants’ attire. Julia had worn her new black-and-white-striped silk for the occasion, and she knew at once that she had overdressed and that Ulys’s family would assume she was frivolous and worldly. So much could be decided upon a single first glance.

  Fortunately Ulys was there, his hand upon the small of her back, his voice firm and proud as he introduced her. This is my wife, he announced with every glance and gesture, and as you love me, you must love her. Julia hoped they would take heed.

  “Welcome to Bethel, Julia, and to our home,” the woman who must be Hannah said, her voice low and quiet, her eyes a soft brown behind the small, round lenses of her spectacles. A delicate kerchief tied about her neck relieved the severity of her plain black gown. “I am Mrs. Grant.”

  I am too, Julia almost blurted, but she caught herself in time. “How do you do? It’s such a pleasure to meet you at last.”

  Mrs. Grant nodded, her expression alert and inquiring, evidently untroubled by the nerves and expectations buzzing about Julia like so many invisible maddened hornets. She was taller than Julia—but then most people were, for Julia stood only five feet tall—with a delicate figure built upon a ramrod spine. She wore a small lace cap over her hair, which, Ulys had confided, had once been ruddy like his own but had turned chalk white during the last six months of the Mexican War, when not one of his letters from the battlefield had reached her.

  “We will have supper later, here at home,” Mrs. Grant said, after a lengthy silence that Julia found awkwardly long but which seemed to bother no one else. “Many of our friends wish to meet you.”

  “I look forward to it,” Julia replied pleasantly. Then, as if Mrs. Grant’s acknowledgment had given the others permission to address her, Ulys’s siblings came up, one by one, to give her welcome. Ulys was the eldest, Simpson second, and following him was Clara, twenty years of age, somewhat stern and disapproving of manner. Julia knew that golden-haired, sixteen-year-old Virginia, or Jennie as she was called, was Ulysses’s favorite sister, and Julia immediately took a liking to the warm, friendly girl with kind, gray-blue eyes so much like Ulys’s. Orvil was the next eldest, and even though they had already met, he joined the queue to shake her hand, his merry grin lifting her spirits. The youngest of the six Grant siblings was nine-year-old Mary Frances, whose lovely features, gray eyes, and brilliant complexion promised great beauty. She spoke to Julia with grave sweetness, in elegant phrases that suggested a clever mind at work.

  The Grant siblings were so cordial and welcoming after their initial reserve that Julia felt her trepidation ebbing, but she had still not met her father-in-law. He had gone out to the country to fetch back Grandmama Simpson, his wife’s stepmother, who, despite her age and the discomforts of travel, had been determined to meet Ulys and his new bride. Julia found the tall and robust, warm and smiling Grandmama Simpson utterly delightful. She wore a dress of rich, chestnut-brown Irish poplin, a snowy muslin kerchief about her shoulders, and a soft white muslin cap upon her silvery gray bun, the wide ties in a bow beneath her chin. “You must call me Grandmama too,” she declared, clasping Julia’s hands.

  As Simpson led his grandmother to a comfortable chair by the hearth, Ulys’s father—for he could be no other—came forward, scrutinizing her expectantly as Ulys introduced them. Mr. Grant was much taller than his son, sturdily built but with stooped shoulders that betrayed decades of hard labor. Like Ulys he had a wide forehead, high cheekbones, and a thin, resolute mouth, but his eyes seemed small and severe behind his spectacles and his face was pockmarked from years of accidental splashing from tannic acid. As Julia well knew, Ulys had forsaken his father’s trade for a West Point education.

  “So,” Jesse Root Grant said abruptly, “you’re the western belle who captured my son’s heart.”

  “I’m happy to lay claim to that title.” Julia put on her most charming smile. “However, I was merely repaying the favor, for he stole my heart first.”

  Mr. Grant snorted. “That’s not how Lyss tells it.”

  Before he could elaborate, if that was his intention, Mrs. Grant summoned the family to supper. Grace was reassuringly familiar, for like the Dents the Grants were Methodists, but conversation was restrained to murmured requests for dishes and pleases and thank-yous, until Julia began to feel oppressed and restless.

  “My husband is called by so many names,” she said brightly, smiling around the table. Ulys smiled indulgently, and Orvil and Mary regarded her with curious interest. “I call him Ulys, but I’ve overheard his army comrades call him Sam, and you all call him Lyss.”

  “Sometimes we call him Texas,” Orvil remarked.

  “Lyss or even Texas I understand,” Julia replied. “But Sam?”

  “Would you prefer Hiram?” Clara inclined her head toward her brother and dabbed at the corner of her mouth with her napkin. “That is his given name, after all. Didn’t you know?”

  Julia glanced from Clara to Ulys to his mother, instinctively following the trail of authority on the subject.

  “He was baptized Hiram Ulysses Grant,” Mr. Grant answered for them.

  “Jesse and I chose Ulysses together,” said Grandmama Simpson proudly. “We had recently finished reading Fénelon’s Telemachus, and we agreed that it was a good, noble name.”

  “Grandfather preferred Hiram,” said Jennie shyly, smiling across the table at Julia. “He called it a good, honest, American name.”

  “Mrs. Grant and I compromised.” Mr. Grant’s slight frown suggested that even so many years later, he wished he had not. “We named him Hiram Ulysses Grant.”

  “And so he remained for many years, although we always called him Lyss for short,” said Simpson. “Now consider his initials.”

  “Hiram Ulys—” Julia gave a little laugh. “Oh, dear. HUG.”

  Simpson spread his palms and touched the tips of his thumbs together as if to frame the monogram. “Now you must imagine those initials pounded with brass nails into a trunk belonging to a young cadet setting off for West Point.”

  “I confess I find it endearing,” said Julia, watching the color rise faintly in her husband’s tanned cheeks, “but for a young man going off to the military academy, I suppose it wouldn’t do.”

  “It would have been an obvious invitation to ridicule,” said Ulys, “so I decided to switch the initials and call myself Ulysses H. Grant.”

  “But the matter had already been decided for him,” Mr. Grant broke in. “Congressman Hamer, the gentleman who signed Lyss’s formal application, had put him down as Ulysses S. Grant, assuming that his middle name was Simpson, for my wife’s people.”

  “West Point knew me as Ulysses S. Grant, and since I rather liked the name, I decided to adopt it as they had it down,” Ulys said. “I realized too late that cadets relish any chance to poke fun. Whenever they saw ‘U. S. Grant’
posted on a bulletin board, they’d call me United States Grant, or Uncle Sam Grant, and eventually, just plain Sam.”

  Julia laughed, delighted. “Well, I like Ulys best, but I would have loved you no matter what you called yourself.”

  In the days that followed, the newlyweds made the customary round of calls to family and friends, first in Bethel and later venturing out to Georgetown, Cincinnati, and Maysville. Everyone welcomed Julia graciously, and everyone had a favorite story of Ulys to share—often of the young ladies Ulys had taken ice-skating or horseback riding, and one in particular for whom he had painted a watercolor landscape of the majestic scenery around West Point.

  “I never said I didn’t enjoy the company of young ladies before I met you,” Ulys defended himself mildly. “I said only that I had never fallen in love.”

  “You never painted me a watercolor landscape,” she said, unable to refute his explanation and yet still pricked by jealousy.

  “I might have done, if I hadn’t spent almost our entire courtship in Mexico.”

  Her jealousy was immediately forgotten. “I do hope you’ll never go to war again.”

  “As do I,” said Ulys soberly, taking her hands in his. “I want nothing ever to part us.”

  • • •

  It was not unusual for the Dent sisters to bestow their worn, outgrown dresses upon their favorite servants, but the gift of a lovely, almost new India mull muslin gown had no precedent. Still, as the entire family had witnessed Julia offering it to Jule, no one objected when she retrieved it from her absent mistress’s wardrobe and carried it off to the servants’ quarters in the attic. There, by whatever light she could find, Jule began altering it to fit her own figure, deftly plucking out stitches and taking in seams, always out of sight of the curious Dent women.

  Late one night a week after Julia’s departure, Jule donned the altered gown, crept quietly down the attic stairs, slipped out the back door, and raced soundlessly to the carriage house, where Gabriel waited.

  A side door opened, and faint lantern light from within briefly cast Gabriel into silhouette. “Are you ready?” he asked, quickly shutting the door behind him, his voice a warm caress in the darkness.

  She nodded, breathless from apprehension and excitement.

  Hand in hand, they hurried through the gate and down the sidewalk, ready to duck into an alley or a shadowed doorway at the first glimpse of anyone who might arrest them for breaking curfew. At last they came to the African Methodist Episcopal church, where their soft knock upon the door was answered by the pastor himself, a former slave twenty years free. He quickly led them into the chapel, where his wife and brother stood witness as Gabriel and Jule spoke the vows that made them husband and wife.

  Jule had never been happier, but her joy was diminished by her regret that she had let fear and uncertainty restrain her from marrying Gabriel sooner—and by hot, raw anger for the old master and missus and even Julia for engendering that crippling doubt.

  “Don’t dwell on anger or regret another day more,” Gabriel said, soothing her with kisses on her cheeks, her brow, her lips. “All that matters is that we’re married now.”

  She spent the night in his arms, sharing his pallet in the carriage house, but she woke before dawn and stole quietly back into the house before the Dents noticed her absence. If Julia had not been away on her wedding trip, Jule never could have managed it.

  In the weeks that followed, she passed the long days waiting on Nell and Emma and mixing up concoctions for the household—a hair tonic for the missus one day, a salve to soothe burns for Annie and Poppy the next.

  Throughout each day, she welcomed every chance glimpse of her beloved husband, and night after night, she found comfort and tenderness in his embrace.

  • • •

  In mid-October, with the end of Ulys’s furlough approaching, he and Julia bade farewell to his family and returned to St. Louis. The journey home should have been as delightful as their first excursion upon the rivers, but with each passing day Julia felt more sharply the pain of impending loss.

  On the eve of their departure to rejoin Ulys’s regiment in Detroit, Julia and Ulys sat alone in the Dent drawing room, Julia wiping her eyes after another bout with tears, Ulys trying to comfort her. “For four years I’ve looked forward to spending all of our days together,” he said, managing a wan smile, “and yet, after only two months, you’re full of regret.”

  “I’ll never regret marrying you,” Julia protested, only to fall silent as her father strode into the room.

  “Grant,” Papa said gruffly, “I have a solution to this quandary. You join your regiment and leave Julia here at home. You can visit her whenever you get a leave of absence.”

  “That would be only once or twice a year.” Ulys turned a worried, appraising glance upon Julia. “But I’ll do whatever’s best for Julia.”

  Papa shook his head, frowning. “I always knew Julia wasn’t suited to be an army wife, but I’m sorry to be proven right.”

  Ulys sat beside her and put his arm around her shoulders. “Is that what you want, Julia?” he asked gently. “Would you like to stay with your father while I go on alone?”

  “No, no, no,” said Julia, distressed. “If you’re going—and you must—I’ll go with you. I couldn’t bear to be left behind.”

  And so she dried her tears and told Papa that her place was with her husband.

  When Papa nodded and withdrew, Ulys interlaced his fingers through Julia’s and held her gaze steadily. “We’re never to be parted,” he said firmly. “Agreed?”

  “Agreed,” Julia replied. They had lived apart too much already. “Never again will we be separated. Wherever you go, I’ll follow.”

  Chapter Four

  NOVEMBER 1848–AUGUST 1854

  In the first few weeks after the newlyweds departed, Jule felt an exhilarating rush of emotion she supposed was something like freedom. While the Dents anxiously awaited the mails and read bits of Julia’s precious letters aloud to one another, news from far-off places called Sackets Harbor and Lake Ontario and Madison Barracks, Jule felt like a colt unharnessed, still confined within corral fences but able to run and buck and kick as she pleased.

  “Don’t let them catch you idle,” Annie warned her one afternoon when she came upon Jule in the kitchen garden, picking herbs.

  “Who’s idle?” protested Jule, indicating her basket. “The herb lady taught me how to brew up a potion to ease sunburn.” A few days before, young Miss Emma had neglected to wear her bonnet on a picnic with friends, and the skin of her apple-red cheeks had begun to slough off in thin, white flakes, sending the missus into lamentations of worry about permanent damage to her complexion. If Jule could win the missus’s gratitude while soothing Miss Emma’s discomfort, that would make for a good day’s work.

  Annie planted a fist on her hip and fixed Julia with a hard, worried stare. “A slave with nothing to do’s always the first to get sold when money’s tight.”

  Unsettled, Jule went about her work more quickly, and the next day, when she overheard Nell and her mother discussing a friend’s betrothal, she suggested that they offer the bride-to-be Jule’s hairdressing services for the day of her engagement party. Nell’s friend was so delighted with her elegant tresses—which attracted the admiration of every other young lady at the party and won a special compliment from her fiancé—that she begged Nell to extend the favor again on her wedding day.

  “This a gift to her from you like last time,” Jule asked as she was packing up her little satchel of combs and ribbons and pomades, “or are you hiring me out to her?”

  A thoughtful glimmer came into Nell’s eye. “A gift, as before,” Nell said, but a musing tone in her voice satisfied Jule that she had planted the seed of an idea.

  Soon thereafter, the missus summoned Jule to the parlor and informed her that in Julia’s absence, the Dent family in
tended to hire Jule out to ladies who required her special skills. “I realize you don’t often go out amid strangers, but you needn’t fear,” the mistress assured her. “You’ll work only for families we know well and trust, and none beyond the Gravois Settlement.”

  “Yes, missus. I ain’t afraid of strangers.” That wasn’t entirely true. Jule wasn’t afraid of ladies, even the short-tempered ones. Their menfolk, though—they made her wary.

  “Your wages you will bring to me,” the mistress continued. “Anything you earn above that, whether gifts or gratuities, you may keep.”

  As the months passed and Jule’s fame as a skilled hairdresser spread, the old master crowed over her earnings, paid off debts, and bought his wife an exquisite pearl necklace to thank her for her ingenuity. He persuaded her to send Jule farther afield, hiring her out to acquaintances in St. Louis and then to strangers recommended by friends. Jule walked to work when the family resided in the city, but when they moved out to White Haven, Gabriel drove her to her appointments. Afterward, if they were not expected back too soon, Gabriel would direct the horses through neighborhoods where free colored folk lived.

  The freeborn and manumitted colored residents of St. Louis thrived in humble alleys and grand neighborhoods, and although they could not vote or hold office, some, the self-described Colored Aristocracy, acquired great wealth and the power that accompanied it. Jule’s heart quickened whenever she glimpsed the famed Madame Pelagie Rutgers, a former slave of Haitian descent who had married the mulatto son of a wealthy Dutch merchant. She had amassed a fortune in real estate, from selling tracts of land at huge profits as the city expanded and by renting her own commercial properties and tenements to white businessmen. Rumor had it that Madame Rutgers was worth almost a half million dollars, a vast, almost incomprehensible amount. To Jule, who had no surname and knew few women of color accorded so much as the respectful title of “missus,” Madame Rutgers’s honorific was as much a sign of her status and success as her furs and jewels and fine residence. Jule hoped someday Madame Rutgers would find herself in need of a hairdresser, and that a satisfied customer would recommend her.