Mrs. Grant and Madame Jule

by Jennifer Chiaverini

  And yet the illuminated city was not so marvelous that Mr. Bryant was blinded to the charms of the young beauty seated beside him, and of all the wonders Jule observed that night, no sight pleased her more than the glances of fond admiration that passed between the glassblower and the seamstress.

  • • •

  To Julia the illumination had been a marvelous, breathtaking, awe-inspiring spectacle, all the more so because the great general in chief had been by her side, holding her hand.

  Mrs. Lincoln had wanted it quite otherwise. Shortly after Julia had parted from Mrs. Stanton at the Willard, the Stantons’ eldest son had called with an invitation for Ulys and Julia to accompany them in their carriage to view the illumination, and afterward, to be honored guests at a reception at their home. When Julia told Ulys of the arrangements, he had explained that Mrs. Lincoln had invited Ulys—but not Julia—to ride out with her and the president, and he had accepted.

  “Oh, Ulys,” Julia had said, crushed. “I wanted so badly to see the illumination with my victor by my side. Why didn’t Mrs. Lincoln invite me too?”

  “I’ll ride out with you and the Stantons first,” Ulys had replied. “Afterward, I’ll leave you at their house so you can enjoy the reception. Then I’ll accompany Mr. and Mrs. Lincoln, because I know it would please the president.”

  At nightfall, the Stantons had called for them, and after an enchanting hour’s ride, the carriage had brought them to the Stanton residence. Julia and the Stantons descended, and after a quick farewell, Ulys continued on to the Executive Mansion for a second tour of the illuminated city.

  Although Julia would have preferred to enter the reception on Ulys’s arm, she enjoyed the evening tremendously, the music and dancing, the delicious food and drink. Nearly every guest had wanted to meet her, and she had graciously accepted their congratulations on her husband’s behalf. When Ulys had returned from his outing with the Lincolns, thunderous applause had welcomed him, and the band had played a particularly invigorating rendition of “Hail to the Chief.”

  It had been a glorious, exhilarating day, and Julia had expected to sleep well that night, curled up beside her victor, the quilts drawn softly over them both, a smile on her lips, her arm resting on his chest, his breath warm and steady upon her brow.

  But she woke before dawn, breathless and trembling, shaken from sleep by harrowing dreams that faded the moment she tried to remember them. A terrible, dark sense of foreboding oppressed her, and although she lay down close to Ulys and prayed and tried to drift off to sleep again, a nameless, terrible dread kept her anxiously awake.

  Her fear diminished with the sunrise, but she knew she could not spend another night in Washington. As soon as Ulys woke, even before he rose from bed and lit his first cigar of the morning, Julia asked if they could leave for Burlington on the early train. “I wish we could,” said Ulys, tucking a long strand of her chestnut hair behind her ear, “but I promised Mr. Lincoln that I’d call on him this morning and see what we can do about reducing the army. He also wants me to report to the cabinet about the surrender.”

  “After that, might we go?” Julia implored. “Please, Ulys. I’m absolutely desperate to see the children.”

  “I’m sure Helen would have telegraphed us if they were ill. Is something else troubling you?”

  “I don’t know,” said Julia helplessly, wringing her hands. “It’s just a feeling.”

  Ulys studied her. He always took her feelings seriously, no matter how irrational they seemed. “I’ll do my best to finish my work in time for us to take the evening train to Burlington.”

  Julia thanked him profusely, tears of relief springing into her eyes. Jesse came bounding into the room then, hungry and cheerful, so Ulys sent down for breakfast. It arrived shortly after they finished dressing for the day, but on the tray was a letter a messenger had brought over from the White House. Uneasy, Julia watched as Ulys unfolded the page. “It’s from the president. ‘Dear General: Suppose you come at eleven o’clock, instead of nine. Robert has just returned and I want to see something of him before I go to work.’” Ulys shook his head regretfully as he set the letter aside. “I’m sorry, Julia, but I think this will prevent me from being able to leave this evening after all.”

  “We must go,” Julia insisted. “Ulys, please. We must.”

  “We will, my dear, if it’s at all possible.”

  Julia knew he could promise no more than that, so she resigned herself to an anxious wait.

  As soon as he departed for the White House, she wrote to Mrs. Stanton to say that they would not attend the theater that evening. Even if she and Ulys could not leave Washington, Julia felt too disconcerted to sit in the state box with Mrs. Lincoln, who had snubbed her several times too often.

  At about midday, a knock sounded on the door. “Come in,” Julia called, expecting the bellboy with the day’s calling cards. Instead, in walked a man dressed in a worn tan corduroy coat and trousers and a rather shabby hat. “Who are you?” asked Julia, startled. “What do you want?”

  “You are Mrs. Grant?” the stranger asked gruffly.

  “Of course I am.”

  He bowed. “Mrs. Lincoln sends me with her compliments to say that she will call for you at exactly eight o’clock to go to the theater.”

  Julia frowned, disliking both the unkempt appearance of the messenger and his message, for the first smacked of discourtesy and the second of command. “You may return with my compliments to Mrs. Lincoln,” she said sharply, “and say I regret that as General Grant and I intend to leave the city this afternoon, we will not be able to accompany the president and Mrs. Lincoln.”

  He hesitated. “But, madam, the papers announce that General Grant will be with President Lincoln tonight at the theater.”

  “The papers are wrong. Deliver my message to Mrs. Lincoln as I have given it to you. You may go now.”

  He bowed again, and as he turned to leave, he smiled impertinently. Unsettled, Julia shut the door behind him firmly and leaned back against it, heart pounding, her sense of foreboding surging more intensely than ever. Swiftly she began packing, determined to set out for Burlington the moment Ulys returned to the Willard.

  By the time the clock chimed noon, Ulys still had not come back, so Julia took Jesse and met Mary Emma Rawlins and her little stepdaughter Emily downstairs in the dining room for luncheon. No sooner had they placed their orders when four men seated themselves at a nearby table and proceeded to watch them closely. Julia’s poor eyes might have deceived her, but she was certain one of the men was the strange messenger who had come to her suite earlier that day.

  “Be discreet,” Julia urged Mary Emma in an undertone, “but observe the men opposite us and tell me what you think.”

  Mary Emma calmly studied the men from the corner of her eye and murmured that they did seem quite peculiar, but when Ulys arrived in midafternoon from the White House and Julia told him of their insolent stares, he said absently, “Oh, I suppose they were merely curious.”

  Julia disagreed, but when he told her they could leave Washington on the evening train, she kept her peace.

  About half past three o’clock, the wife of General Daniel Henry Rucker kindly called at the Willard in her two-seated top-carriage to take the Grants, Colonel Porter, and Captain Samuel Beckwith, a telegrapher, to the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad station.

  “How is the president?” Julia inquired as they rode along Pennsylvania Avenue toward the depot. She still regretted not paying her respects to him before he departed City Point aboard the River Queen.

  “He seemed healthier and more cheerful than I’ve ever seen him,” Ulys replied. “He told us—his cabinet and me—about a curious dream he’d had last night, and I was reminded of you, Julia, and your prophetic gifts.”

  “Indeed? How so?”

  “We’d all hoped for word from the field that Johnston’s army had
surrendered to Sherman, but no news had come. Mr. Lincoln told me not to worry, for he was certain that good tidings would soon arrive, because the night before, he’d had a particular dream that came to him without fail on the eve of every great and important event of the war.”

  “What sort of dream?” asked Mrs. Rucker, intrigued.

  “When Secretary Welles asked him to describe it, Mr. Lincoln told of standing aboard a ship—a singular, indescribable vessel—moving swiftly toward a dark and indefinite shore. He’d had this dream before Sumter, Bull Run, Antietam, Gettysburg, Stones River, Vicksburg, and Wilmington. When I remarked that not all of those great events had been victories, he smiled and said that he remained hopeful that whatever event his dream heralded would be favorable.”

  “I hope his presentiment is correct,” said Julia, turning her gaze to the window. At that moment, a dark-haired, pale man on a bay horse with a black mane and a long black tail galloped by them, peering into the carriage as he sped past. He rode twenty yards ahead, wheeled his horse about, and returned at the same swift pace, passing closely on Ulys’s side and glaring so disagreeably that Ulys instinctively drew back.

  “Everyone wants to see you, General,” their driver said cheerfully.

  “Yes,” said Ulys, “but I don’t care for such glances as that.”

  “I’m sure that was one of the men who stared at me at luncheon,” exclaimed Julia.

  “How dreadfully ill-mannered,” said Mrs. Rucker, indignant.

  Ulys peered over his shoulder in the direction the rider had taken. “It’s just as well we’re leaving.”

  The president of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad had arranged for a special car to carry them home, and as the Grants and their party climbed aboard, Julia paused to speak to the conductor. “The general urgently needs his rest. Would you be sure to lock the doors to our car so he won’t be disturbed?” The conductor assured her he would, but she kept careful watch until he turned the bolt and the train pulled away from the station.

  Julia had expected her dull sense of dread to dissipate with every passing mile, but if anything it steadily increased, as if they were speeding toward disaster rather than away from it. Night had fallen by the time they reached Baltimore, and Julia, dozing with her head on Ulys’s shoulder and Jesse sleeping half on the seat and half in her lap, woke with a start at the sound of a loud, insistent rattle. Blinking, she discerned a man on the platform, his face hidden in the shadows, trying to open the locked door.

  “He must not realize this is a private car,” said Ulys as the man wrestled with the latch determinedly. When the whistle blew, he threw his hands into the air in frustration and stalked away.

  As the train chugged from the station, Julia glimpsed the man pacing irritably on the platform. “Why, he missed the train altogether.”

  “Stubbornness cost him a ride to Philadelphia,” Ulys remarked, raising his cigar to his lips.

  Upon their arrival in the city, they decided to dine at Bloodgood’s Hotel near the Walnut Street wharf while awaiting the ferry that would carry them across the river to meet their connecting train. They had scarcely begun when a messenger brought Ulys a telegram. Before he could unfold it, two more arrived in rapid succession.

  As Ulys silently read the first, his face went starkly pale. “What’s the matter?” asked Julia as he closed his eyes and bowed his head.

  “General?” prompted Colonel Porter as Ulys studied the second telegram, and the third.

  “I’ll read them to you.” Ulys’s voice shook with emotion. “But first prepare yourself for the most painful and startling news that could be received.”

  Julia’s heart cinched. “The children—”

  “No, Julia,” he replied quietly, but even as she breathed a sigh of relief, he glanced around the table and warned, “Control your feelings. Betray nothing to the people around us.”

  Julia steeled herself, envisioning Sherman defeated by Johnston, the war perpetuated indefinitely, but what Ulys told them—reading aloud in a calm, quiet voice while his listeners held perfectly still and silent, their faces careful, expressionless masks drained of all color—was worse, far worse, than anything she could have imagined.

  “‘The President was assassinated at Ford’s Theater at ten thirty tonight and cannot live,’” Ulys read, scarcely above a whisper. “‘The wound is a pistol shot through the head. Secretary Seward and his son Frederick were also assassinated at their residence and are in a dangerous condition. The Secretary of War desires that you return to Washington immediately.’” Clearing his throat, Ulys passed the telegram to Julia on his right, who read it silently, numb with horror, before handing it to Beckwith. Ulys read the second telegram silently and summarized it for them, saying, “The assistant secretary of war warns me to take precautions.” That telegram, too, he passed to Julia, but her gaze rested unseeing, uncomprehending on the paper, her ears ringing so loudly that she scarcely heard the last telegram, something about Vice President Andrew Johnson being in danger.

  It could not be true. Mr. Lincoln, that good, kind, compassionate man—he could not be lost to the world when they still needed him so desperately. How could he be snatched from them with the end of the war within their grasp, without enjoying a single day of the peace and unity he had fought for over the past four long, difficult years?

  Ulys’s hand on her shoulder jolted her from her reverie. “Come, Julia,” he said, helping her to her feet. She realized then that the others had risen from the table, even little Jesse, who struggled fiercely to hold back sobs. With a soft moan, she folded her son in her arms and held him, murmuring soothingly until Ulys touched her arm in a wordless signal that it was time to go.

  In grief-stricken silence, they returned to the ferry dock, where Ulys quickly determined that as Burlington was only an hour away, he would return to Washington no later if he first escorted Julia and Jesse home and ordered a special train to carry him swiftly back to the capital.

  It was long past midnight when they crossed the river and boarded the train for Burlington, all of them silent and grieving, but sharply aware of their surroundings, vigilant lest a madman attack the general in chief.

  “Ulys,” Julia asked softly as the train raced northward, “who could have done such a terrible thing, and why? Why?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Confederate partisans seeking revenge?”

  “The South had nothing to gain from President Lincoln’s death. He was inclined to be kind and magnanimous, and his death at this time—” Ulys shook his head. “It’s an irreparable loss to the South. They badly need his tenderness and generosity.”

  “Andrew Johnson will be the president now, will he not?”

  “Yes,” said Ulys flatly, “and I confess this fills me with the gloomiest apprehension.”

  In Burlington, Ulys scarcely had time to look in on his eldest children, still slumbering peacefully in their beds, and to read the telegrams sent after they had departed Philadelphia. The special train was soon made ready to return Ulys to Washington. He and his aides left while it was yet starlight, but Julia could not calm her turbulent thoughts enough for sleep.

  It was not yet dawn when callers began knocking hesitantly upon the cottage door, a scant handful that swelled into a crowd with the sunrise, some weeping, some pallid with shock, all wanting to know if the horrifying rumors were true. By midmorning, after her three eldest children had leapt from their beds and had raced downstairs to welcome her home—rosy cheeked and laughing and demanding kisses, oblivious to their youngest brother’s tear-streaked face and downcast eyes—their worst fears were confirmed.

  “I am requested by the Lieutenant General to inform you of his safe arrival,” Captain Beckwith had telegraphed Julia. “The President died this morning. There are still hopes of Secretary Seward’s recovery.”

  Julia carried the telegram with her all day, and
when words failed her, when she could not bring herself to tell her distraught visitors the grim news, when she could not believe it herself, the small slip of paper spoke for her.

  President Abraham Lincoln was dead.

  • • •

  Never had a nation plummeted so suddenly from joyful hope to utter despair. Grief-stricken mourners sought comfort in churches and in the company of friends. Others took refuge in righteous anger, demanding justice and retribution. Flags that had waved proudly in victory were slowly lowered to half-staff. Even war-weary people of the South expressed grief and dismay. They seemed to realize that they had lost a merciful, compassionate friend who had wanted not to punish them in defeat, but rather to help them recover and rebuild after the long, devastating war.

  Julia remained in Burlington with the children throughout the days of lamentation and woe that followed. She did not attend Mr. Lincoln’s solemn funeral, where Ulys stood in a place of honor at the head of the martyred president’s black-swathed catafalque in the White House. Thousands of mourners paid their respects as he lay in state in the East Room, and tens of thousands more the next day in the Capitol rotunda. On Friday, April 21, nearly a week after the president’s death, a nine-car funeral train bedecked with bunting, crepe, and a portrait of Mr. Lincoln carried the remains of the president and his young son Willie, who had died of typhoid fever at the White House more than three years before, on a seventeen-hundred-mile journey to Springfield, Illinois. Thousands of mourners gathered along the rail lines to bid farewell to their fallen leader, lighting the way with bonfires as the funeral train made its slow, circuitous journey west. Julia’s heart went out to Mrs. Lincoln when she learned that the bereaved widow was frantic with grief, prostrate with anguish, refusing to see anyone but Secretary Welles’s wife and her faithful friend, the dressmaker Mrs. Keckley.