Mrs. Grant and Madame Jule

by Jennifer Chiaverini

  Throughout those dark days, Ulys tirelessly performed the duties of his office, securing the capital, supporting Sherman as he negotiated Johnston’s surrender. He collaborated with Secretary Stanton in the relentless pursuit of the assassin and his cronies, and when sketches of the murderer appeared in all the papers, Julia immediately recognized John Wilkes Booth as the strange, pale, dark-haired man who had stared at her so insolently while she dined at the Willard, the same aggressive rider who had glared at Ulys as they rode to the depot mere hours before the assassination.

  “There is little doubt that the plot contemplated the destruction of more than the President and Sec. of State,” Ulys had written home soon after his return to the capital. “I think now however it has expended itself and there is but little to fear.”

  Julia was less certain. As federal troops pursued the wretched fiend Booth through Maryland and into Virginia, a letter arrived at the cottage, addressed to Ulys in an unfamiliar hand. He had asked Julia to open all telegrams and letters that arrived for him, and what she read chilled her to the marrow.

  “General Grant,” the anonymous author began, “thank God, as I do, that you still live. It was your life that fell to my lot, and I followed you to your train. Your car door was locked, and thus you escaped me, thank God!”

  Was the letter an expression of remorse, or a warning?

  PART THREE

  Cherish

  Chapter Twenty-four

  MAY 1865–NOVEMBER 1868

  In the weeks that followed, Secretary Seward and his son recovered from their grievous wounds, but John Wilkes Booth and the four other conspirators would pay for their crimes with their lives. Julia would never know if the anonymous letter writer had been among those hanged on the grounds of the United States Arsenal in Washington on that stiflingly hot day.

  In late April, General Johnston surrendered to General Sherman in North Carolina, and in the first week of May, federal troops captured the fugitive Jefferson Davis; his wife, Varina; and a few loyal companions near Irwinville, Georgia. By the end of the month, the remaining bands of rebel forces recognized the futility of their ongoing resistance and surrendered.

  Soon thereafter, Washington was the scene of a grand review of the armies, two days of parades and celebration honoring the courageous, triumphant soldiers who had brought victory and peace to the nation. Julia returned to the capital for the glorious event and sat beside Ellen Sherman in a place of honor with their husbands, ranking generals, and the cabinet on the reviewing stand across from the White House. Each glance that took in the Executive Mansion reminded Julia sharply, painfully, of the great and good man who had once inhabited it, and of the distraught, grief-stricken widow who had only recently departed for Chicago, accompanied by her two sons, her doctor, and her faithful friend, the celebrated dressmaker Elizabeth Keckley. Inexplicably, Julia thought of Jule and fervently wished that they could have been friends instead of mistress and servant. Mrs. Keckley, too, had once been a slave in St. Louis, and she had become an intimate of the White House. What great heights could Jule have attained if Julia had granted her her freedom instead of compelling her to run away?

  Julia could only imagine, and she knew she would never be able to remember Jule without regret and remorse.

  It was comforting to distract herself with the magnificent pageant that flowed past the reviewing stand, the Army of the Potomac on the first day of the review and the Army of the Tennessee on the second. A great banner strung across the Capitol declared, “The Only National Debt We Can Never Repay Is the Debt We Owe to the Victorious Soldiers.” Nearly two thousand schoolgirls in white dresses lined Pennsylvania Avenue, singing “The Battle Cry of Freedom” in their sweet, piping voices. As the troops marched past, their tattered, shot-ridden battle flags told their story of sacrifice and triumph. Onlookers cheered and threw flowers in the path of General George Meade’s horse as he rode at the head of his army. General George Armstrong Custer, with his scarlet necktie and flowing golden locks, lost his broad-brimmed hat as his steed dashed ahead alongside the column of cavalry. For six hours each day, as the infantry, cavalry, artillery, and every other branch of the service marched proudly past, ladies on the sidewalks threw flowers in their path and soldiers draped floral wreaths around the barrels of their rifles.

  At long last, the war was over.

  • • •

  In a springtime full of warmth and hope, the Grants moved from Burlington into the beautiful residence bestowed upon them by the good citizens of Philadelphia. Julia was utterly delighted with their new home, which she considered perfect in every way, beautifully furnished from attic to basement, the closets full of snowy white linen, the tables and cabinets set with fine glass and silver, the larders and coal bins almost bursting with abundance.

  Before long Fred and Buck returned to school in Burlington, while Julia enrolled Nellie and Jesse in local day schools. Ulys remained with them in Philadelphia for a few days, but all too soon he was summoned back to Washington, a pattern that repeated itself with dismaying regularity as spring blossomed into summer. Although Julia made new friends and their neighbors were unfailingly generous and kind, she was lonely at home with only her two youngest children for company—and little wonder, she thought, after four years in the field, surrounded by the bustle and excitement of the military, the marshaling of troops, the grand reviews, the distinguished visitors, and, yes, even the danger.

  “I see less of you in peacetime than at war,” she complained mildly to Ulys during one of his brief, unsatisfactory visits home.

  “It does seem that life is too short to spend it apart,” Ulys said, “but when we accepted this house, we promised the Union Club that we’d live here.”

  “Well, we can’t,” said Julia firmly. “These past few weeks have proven that you can’t make your home so far from your headquarters. I hate to part with this lovely house, but you must give it back.”

  Ulys tried, but the people of Philadelphia refused to accept it, insisting that it would remain the Grant home even if the Grants were obliged to reside elsewhere. In midsummer, the family moved to a rented house in Georgetown Heights in Washington, which Julia found large and conveniently placed but uncomfortable and terribly overpriced, and she resolved to find better, more permanent lodgings as soon as she was able. Once more the people of Philadelphia impressed Julia with their inexhaustible generosity. So great was their admiration and gratitude for General Grant that they urged him to rent out the house they had given him, accept the income as yet another gift, and move all the lovely furnishings to their Washington residence.

  The house in Georgetown Heights had a fine library, and there Ulys wrote a lengthy, detailed report for Secretary Stanton about the armies of the United States, from the time he had taken command as general in chief in March 1864 until the end of the war. As soon as he finished, Julia put her foot down. “Ulys, you need and deserve rest,” she declared, “even more than the children and I need and deserve your company.” Ulys loved to travel, and so Julia proposed that they spend the late summer months touring the country, or at least the Northern states, which would surely receive them kindly.

  The Grants were gratified to discover that their reception exceeded even Julia’s optimistic expectations. Wherever Ulys appeared, thousands of people, many of them his veteran soldiers, met him with fanfare and celebration and an abundance of heartfelt gratitude. Across the North, Ulys was feted with parades, banquets, and receptions and presented with more horses, medals, jeweled swords, and honorary degrees than any single man could ever use. It was not quite the restful vacation Julia had intended, especially since Secretary Stanton had required Ulys to take along a military staff and he was obliged to spend many hours sending and receiving dispatches. Nevertheless, Ulys and the children thrived, happy to be all together at last.

  In mid-August, the people of Galena welcomed their local hero home with a glorious proc
ession, stirring speeches, and brilliant fireworks. As the family was driven through the city in an open barouche, they passed beneath a banner that proclaimed, “Hail to the Chief Who in Triumph Advances.” Another on Main Street announced that the new sidewalk Ulys had long requested had been built exactly as he had desired. “It looks like you needn’t run for mayor after all,” Julia teased him over the merry music of a brass band.

  The procession halted at the DeSoto House, where their friend Congressman Elihu Washburne embarrassed Ulys and moved Julia to tears with a fond, reverent speech before ten thousand ardent citizens. Afterward the Grant family was escorted up Bouthiller Street to the top of the hill, where the mayor presented them with a lovely residence—an Italianate villa with balustraded balconies and covered porches, exquisitely furnished with everything good taste could desire.

  “I almost feel we shouldn’t accept this gift,” Ulys quietly told his overwhelmed wife as their proud hosts led them on a tour through the beautiful home. “I don’t expect to be in Galena very often. I’d hate for this nice home to go to waste.”

  “We’ve always loved Galena, and we may very well retire here someday,” Julia pointed out. “These good people are our friends and neighbors. If they want to give us a home, let them. Would you embarrass them by refusing?”

  To her relief, Ulys needed little convincing, and so they departed Galena with the deed tucked safely in Julia’s trunk.

  They journeyed on to Dubuque, St. Paul, Milwaukee, Chicago, and Springfield, and there, too, Ulys received thunderous applause and rapturous ovations from everyone he met. The shouts of “Grant for president!” rang out everywhere, but loudest of all in St. Louis. The family managed to escape the crowds at White Haven, where early autumn had blushed the thickets and forests with scarlet and gold. Julia was overjoyed to be reunited with Papa and her sisters and brothers—especially John. At long last he had been liberated from the Confederate prison in Columbia, had come North in the general release of prisoners, and had made his way home, exhausted, ill, and contrite.

  Julia had not seen her father in months, and she found him much transformed. He had acquired new respect for the son-in-law he had once dismissed, but the years without his beloved wife had aged him greatly, and Julia and her siblings privately discussed his failing health and wondered aloud how much longer he should live alone with only the servants for company. “When the time comes, he’ll have to be convinced to leave White Haven,” Julia warned her brothers and sisters, and even as they agreed, they exchanged unhappy, commiserating glances. Although any of them would have been happy to take him in, none wished to depose their father from his cherished pastoral realm.

  From Missouri the Grants next traveled through Ohio, visiting friends and family along the way and ending their tour in Covington, where Jesse greeted them exuberantly, his old disappointments utterly forgotten. Ulys’s sisters’ cries of welcome beckoned Hannah from her chores, and when the victorious general in chief of the Armies of the United States crossed the threshold, she said calmly, “Well, Ulys, you’ve become a great man, haven’t you?” Then she kissed him on the cheek and returned to her work.

  In late November, President Johnson and Secretary Stanton sent Ulys on an inspection tour of the South. Ulys wrote to Julia often as he traveled from one city to another, and it was with great pleasure that Julia learned he had finally met Miss Elizabeth Van Lew, his daring spymistress. “She appeared in good spirits,” he wrote, “but her loyalty to the Union has earned her the hatred of most of Richmond, and nearly all of her fortune went to fund her intelligence operations. If I ever have the opportunity to help her, I am determined to do so.”

  Ulys returned to Washington in time to celebrate Christmas, and when he escorted Julia to President Johnson’s New Year’s Day reception at the White House, the band struck up “Hail to the Chief” and the other guests showered him in thunderous applause. Soon thereafter, in the middle of January—and thanks to generous donors from New York—Ulys purchased a lovely home at 205 I Street, a spacious, four-story residence surrounded by beautiful grounds in a neighborhood known as Minnesota Row.

  Not long after the Grants settled into their new home, Papa, in failing health, came to live with them. “You know, Julia,” he told her unexpectedly one morning as they sat alone in the parlor reading the papers, “your mother was right about your young man.”

  Tears sprang into Julia’s eyes at the memory of her beloved mother’s unshakable faith in Ulys, her certainty that he would do great things. “You know, Papa,” she said, “I quite agree.”

  • • •

  “Oh, Madame Jule,” exclaimed Mrs. Gilbert when Jule arrived to dress her hair for a state dinner at the White House. Mrs. Johnson—or rather, her two daughters, who shared the role of official hostess for their retiring mother—did not entertain as lavishly as Mrs. Lincoln had, but their guests, especially the ladies, remained as eager as ever to look their very best. “You’ll never guess who moved in across the street a fortnight ago.”

  Jule smiled at the eager young woman in the mirror as she unpacked her satchel. Mrs. Gilbert was the judge’s second wife, three months married and twenty years his junior, recently arrived from Kansas, and thoroughly delighted with everything about life in Washington. “One of Mr. Johnson’s new appointees, I suppose?”

  “In a manner of speaking,” said Mrs. Gilbert coyly, but then she could withhold the secret no longer. “General Grant and his family!”

  Jule felt a peculiar wrenching of the heart. “Is that so?” she said evenly, taking up her comb. “I heard they’d been living in Georgetown Heights, but they plan to move back to Illinois.”

  “The citizens of Galena did give them a lovely home, but the general’s work keeps him in the capital, so here they shall stay.” The young bride clasped her hands together in her lap, her eyes shining. “Isn’t it marvelous that they chose our neighborhood?”

  “Why, yes.” Jule gently ran the comb through Mrs. Gilbert’s golden locks. “How exciting to have such a celebrated neighbor. Have you made Mrs. Grant’s acquaintance?”

  “Not yet, but the judge has invited the Grants for supper Friday evening, so I will soon.” Mrs. Gilbert gave a little start. “Madame Jule, would you like me to recommend you to her? I’d be happy to do so.”

  Years of practice enabled Jule to conceal her distress. “That’s kind of you, Mrs. Gilbert, but I’m sure Mrs. Grant already has a maid to do her hair. She’s newly arrived to the neighborhood, but not to Washington.”

  “Oh, of course. I’m sure you’re right.”

  “If you’d like my services on Friday evening, though, I’d be glad to add you to my schedule.”

  Mrs. Gilbert promptly agreed, and Jule distracted her with suggestions for a new arrangement of curls, a Grecian twist, a becoming ribbon, until Mrs. Grant was forgotten.

  When Jule left the Gilbert residence, she buried her chin in her muffler and glanced warily across the street, but she saw no sign of Julia, the general, or any of the children, nothing to set the house apart from any other on the block. Then, just as she turned away, she glimpsed a thin, white-haired figure at a second-story window—and with a frisson of shock, she recognized the old master, much aged, but unmistakably the patriarch she had feared as a child.

  Heart pounding, Jule forced herself to keep to a walk until she reached the corner. As soon as she was out of sight of the Grant residence, she quickened her pace until she was almost running.

  “I can’t stay,” Jule told Emma, despondent, the next time they met.

  “Nonsense,” Emma protested. “What’s the worst that could happen, even if you rounded a corner and bumped into Mrs. Grant on Pennsylvania Avenue? Slavery is finished. You have nothing to fear and no reason to hide.”

  “I know that,” said Jule shakily. “I can’t explain myself. I know it’s unreasonable. I’m sorry.”

  “Oh, Jule.” Emma
embraced her. “You don’t need to apologize, or to explain. But do promise me you won’t leave Washington before my wedding. Peter and the children and I would be so disappointed.”

  “I wouldn’t miss it for the world,” Jule assured her.

  The wedding, on a lovely afternoon in mid-May, was beautiful—the bride radiant, the groom happy, the guests joyful and thankful and merry. Soon thereafter, Jule considered moving to Texas to search for Gabriel, but President Johnson had recently issued a proclamation declaring an end to the insurrection everywhere but in Texas, and her friends convinced her it would not be safe for a colored woman to travel there alone. As spring turned into summer, Jule contemplated moving to New York, but again Emma persuaded her to delay, this time because of a terrible cholera epidemic sweeping through the city.

  But every time Jule found a good reason to stay in Washington, an unsettling encounter renewed her urgency to flee. One afternoon, she went to the Willard to meet a client, only to glimpse the Grant family seating themselves in the dining room. After a moment of panic, she concealed herself behind a folding screen and watched them, frightened and fascinated, long enough to learn that they were celebrating in honor of Fred’s imminent departure for West Point, where he had been accepted as a cadet. Jule’s eyes filled with tears as she took in the dear faces of the children who had once loved her so wholeheartedly, with such sweet innocence. She had likely become no more than a dim, fond memory to them, the capable nurse who had run away in wartime, abandoning them in—what was it Julia had said?—in her hour of greatest need.