For her part, Julia unclasped the chased gold locket with the daguerreotype of her beloved young lieutenant, which she had worn by its narrow velvet strap about her wrist every day since she and Ulys wed. “Every little bit will help,” Julia said. “A jeweler wouldn’t appraise it as highly as these other treasures, but it would surely fetch a fine price from one of your admirers for its historic and sentimental value.”
“But to us it’s priceless. Julia, I forbid you to give away my wedding gift to you.”
Quickly blinking away tears, Julia nodded and fastened the strap about her wrist again.
Though Mr. Vanderbilt thwarted Ulys’s every attempt to repay the debt, Ulys’s honor would not bear such generosity. When Mr. Vanderbilt departed for an extended European tour, Ulys and Julia turned over mortgages to their real estate and securities for the treasures to his lawyers, who agreed to present them to Mr. Vanderbilt upon his return.
Within a fortnight, police detectives traced Ferdinand Ward to his brother-in-law’s home in Brooklyn, and on May 26, he was arrested and indicted for fraud. Their silent partner, Marine Bank president James D. Fish, was arrested soon thereafter. Julia hoped that Ulys’s one hundred fifty thousand dollars could be recovered, but it was long gone.
“Never mind,” Ulys consoled her. “Our debt to Mr. Vanderbilt is satisfied, and the criminals responsible for our unhappiness will be brought to justice. All will be well.”
Upon becoming president, Ulys had retired his military commission to allow General Sherman and his other subordinates to be promoted, so he would not receive a pension from the army despite his many decades of distinguished service. Unable to pay the household bills, Julia had become quietly, frantically desperate when their good friend Matias Romero, the ambassador from Mexico, called to express his sympathies and secretly left behind a check for one thousand dollars. A day later, a gentleman they had never met from upstate New York mailed them a check for the same amount, folded within a letter that described the payment as “a loan on account of my share for services ending in April 1865.” Julia was grateful, but she knew they could not depend upon spontaneous acts of generosity over the long term.
At the end of May, the Grants closed up their New York mansion and retired to their summer cottage in Long Branch, New Jersey. The four-story, twenty-eight-room residence could not be lost to the bankruptcy because it was not truly theirs; George Childs, publisher of the Philadelphia Public Ledger, had purchased it during Ulys’s first term as president, with the understanding that Ulys should consider the idyllic retreat his own. Before long, their eldest son, Fred, who had lost nearly everything in the collapse of Grant & Ward, rented out his home in Morristown and moved his family in with them.
Ulys spent many hours gazing out at the sea, smoking and contemplating his options. At sixty-two, an age when he ought to retire and enjoy the rewards of a life well lived, he had been forced to start over.
A few days later, as the family lingered at the table after luncheon, Ulys took a peach from a bowl, bit into it, and started as if in great pain. “Oh, my,” he exclaimed, bolting to his feet. “I think something on that peach stung me.”
“Are you all right?” asked Ida. She remained as lovely, bright, and amiable as she had been on her wedding day, and she was devoted to Fred and their two darling children, little Julia, age eight, and Ulysses, three.
His hand to his throat, lips pressed together, Ulys frowned and shook his head. He paced the length of the room and out to the piazza, returning to the kitchen to rinse his throat again and again. “Water hurts me like liquid fire,” he said hoarsely when he returned to the table.
The sharpness of the strange, sudden pain diminished, but Ulys’s discomfort persisted, intensifying whenever he ate anything acidic. He accepted the soothing remedies Julia and Ida offered him but refused medical treatment. “I don’t need a doctor,” Ulys said, more curtly each time Julia suggested that he see a physician. “It’ll be all right directly.”
A week later, Ulys decided to break his self-imposed exile by speaking at a convention of army chaplains in nearby Ocean Grove. Fred, who had achieved the rank of lieutenant colonel before resigning to accompany his parents on their world tour, escorted his father to the gathering, where the audience greeted Ulys with a standing ovation. Dr. A. J. Palmer, an old friend of Ulys’s, had introduced him, declaring, “No combination of Wall Street sharpers shall tarnish the lustre of my old commander’s fame for me.”
A few days later Ulys traveled to Brooklyn, where the Society of the Army of the Potomac elected him their president. The veteran soldiers’ faithful kindness worked wonders on Ulys; the strain left his visage, the tension in his jaw and shoulders eased. Once again Julia was moved to thank God for the valiant United States Army.
At the reunion, Ulys had enjoyed a cordial conversation with Richard Watson Gilder, senior editor of The Century, so it did not come as a complete surprise when his colleague, associate editor Robert Underwood Johnson, called on Ulys at Long Branch to invite him to write a few articles for their magazine.
As the two men spoke on the piazza, Julia concealed her surprise as Ulys frankly acknowledged his financial troubles. “Despite my well-publicized need, I’m reluctant to accept your proposal,” he said, offering Mr. Johnson a cigar, which he declined. “I’m not a writer, and others have already written a great many articles and books about my campaigns. I don’t know what I could add to what’s already in print.”
“An article from the former general in chief of the Union army and United States president would inherently be more informative than anything previously written,” Mr. Johnson replied.
Julia felt as if she were holding her breath while Mr. Johnson suggested that Ulys write four stories, one each about the Battle of Shiloh, the Vicksburg campaign, the Battle of the Wilderness, and General Lee’s surrender at Appomattox. Each article would earn Ulys five hundred dollars, an extraordinary sum. When Ulys agreed, Julia clasped her hands to her heart and said a silent prayer of thanksgiving.
Ulys immediately commenced work on an article about Shiloh. To refresh his memory, he studied official reports, dispatches, and articles by witnesses, but sometimes he merely sat in quiet reflection, gazing out at the ocean and puffing on a cigar. He wrote every word himself, toiling about four hours every day throughout the month of June. On July 1, his handwritten manuscript arrived at the Century offices in New York.
Mr. Gilder promptly replied to thank him, and a few days later, he returned to Long Branch with the annotated manuscript in hand. Noting well Mr. Johnson’s careful praise and tactful suggestions, upon his departure, Julia detained him on the piazza. “I gather that the general’s article is not quite right for The Century,” she said in an undertone.
Mr. Johnson hesitated. “It’s factual and clear,” he said, glancing past Julia to the doorway, as if wary that Ulys might suddenly appear. “But there’s no life in it, no sense of General Grant—what he felt, what he was doing or thinking. One might almost think he wasn’t there.”
“He’s written you a battle report, you mean.”
“Yes,” said Mr. Johnson, looking relieved. “That’s exactly it.”
Julia placed her hand on his forearm. “You should tell him what you want, as straightforwardly as you can. He’s a soldier. He can bear it.”
Mr. Johnson looked dubious, but he thanked her, and the next time he visited, she overheard him encouraging Ulys to add more personal anecdotes to his story—for that was what it was supposed to be, a story, complete with plot and characters. “What we need is for you to approximate such talk as you would make to friends after dinner,” he said, “some of whom would know a great deal about the battle and others who would know nothing at all. The people will be especially interested in your point of view—everything that concerned you, in what you planned, saw, said, and did.”
On subsequent visits, Julia observed Mr. Joh
nson asking Ulys about particular incidents from the war, and in his replies, Ulys chronicled events in rich detail and offered frank descriptions of his fellow officers and his feelings. “You should put that in the article,” Mr. Johnson would say after Ulys finished a tale, and Julia hid a smile when she discovered the editor’s trick to drawing out the recalcitrant general.
“If I had known what he wanted from the beginning,” Ulys remarked to Julia one day after Mr. Johnson departed for New York, “I would have given him that.”
“Think of these early drafts as your apprenticeship. Now you’re ready to begin your masterpiece.”
He gave her a wry look as if to say his intentions were not that grand, but he resumed his work with a new determination. She enjoyed sitting with him while he wrote, but she worried that he often grimaced and absently touched his throat, and that he ate and drank very little.
“Is your throat bothering you again?” she asked one afternoon when he refused the sweet, cool tea she had left on his desk hours before.
“It never stopped hurting entirely,” he replied, without looking up from the page. “It comes and goes.”
“I do wish you’d see a doctor.”
“I don’t have time. Johnson and Gilder want this article by the end of August.”
Julia knew that nagging him would accomplish nothing, but one day, when Ida summoned a doctor to the house to examine her feverish, coughing daughter, she persuaded Ulys to consent to a quick examination. Julia watched the doctor’s expression closely as he peered into her husband’s throat. “The back of your throat is quite inflamed,” he said, frowning. “You should consult your family doctor immediately.”
He wrote a prescription for a mild painkiller, and the moment he left, Julia declared, “You heard him. You must see Dr. Barker right away.”
“Dr. Barker is in Europe,” Ulys said. “I’ll schedule an appointment the day he returns.”
“Do you promise?”
“Yes, my dear little wife,” he replied. “I promise, if you promise not to badger me anymore.”
Julia nodded her assent, knowing she had negotiated the best terms Unconditional Surrender Grant was likely to concede.
• • •
By the middle of August, Ulys had produced an entirely new version of his account of the Battle of Shiloh—and it was riveting. “You have a gift for clarity and simplicity of expression,” said Julia, “and a wonderful eye for detail. I felt as if I were there, riding along with you and your officers. If your letters home had been so terrifying, I might have begged you to resign your commission.”
As Mr. Johnson and Mr. Gilder eagerly prepared to publish the article, Ulys turned his attention to the Vicksburg campaign. But he had always resisted retracing his steps, and it proved to be a difficult task even with pen and paper. Fred—an accomplished author in his own right, having authored a book about his service on the Yellowstone Expedition with the Fourth Infantry—continued to be of great help, and Ulys soon recruited Badeau, author of a successful three-volume history of Ulys’s military career. They checked facts, verified dates, reviewed drafts, and often sat in on Ulys’s conferences with Mr. Johnson.
By early September, Ulys finished the first draft of his article on Vicksburg and commenced the first draft of a piece on the Chattanooga campaign. Soon after he began, Mr. Johnson arrived at Long Branch accompanied by Roswell Smith, president of the Century Company. Although the summer season had passed, the resort town was full of tourists enjoying the sunshine and balmy air, and Ulys often liked to write on the piazza, nodding cordially to passersby who waved as they strolled along the sidewalk between the cottage and the sea. Ulys’s voice was raspy as he welcomed the gentlemen, whose curious gazes lingered on the scarf Ulys wore around his neck despite the summer heat.
Julia served them lemonade, and as she quietly seated herself in a wicker chair at a discreet distance, where she could observe but would not intrude, Mr. Smith broached the subject of Ulys writing his memoirs. His articles were brilliant, Mr. Johnson chimed in, and his swift progress proved that he was more than capable of producing a book. Ulys listened intently, nodding from time to time as the editor and publisher described the project they envisioned, how they would work to create and promote it—and, of keen interest to Julia, how Ulys would profit from the sales.
“Do you really think anyone would be interested in a book I could write?” Ulys asked.
“General,” said Mr. Smith, astonished, “would not the public avidly read Napoleon’s accounts of his battles, if they existed?”
Ulys remained silent, but Julia could tell that the high praise of the comparison impressed him.
“What do you think, Julia?” Ulys asked later, when they were alone.
She thought the gentlemen’s proposal was a godsend, but she said, “When Mark Twain urged you to write your memoirs, you told him you were no writer, that you were sure no one would want your memoirs, and that you would be embarrassed to see a book published under your name.”
“That was three years ago,” said Ulys. “That was before—all this.”
Julia nodded, acknowledging that indeed everything had changed in a matter of months, and that old, trusted decisions must be reconsidered. She could only imagine what other changes yet awaited them, but if Ulys’s memoirs could save their family, he would find the way.
Chapter Twenty-seven
OCTOBER 1884–FEBRUARY 1885
At the end of October, the Grants left Long Branch and returned to their home in New York. Ulys was eager to continue work on his articles for The Century, but Julia insisted that he first put down his pen, set aside his papers, and keep his promise to call on Dr. Fordyce Barker.
“Well?” Julia asked the moment Ulys returned home from the appointment, only to discover that Dr. Barker had not offered a diagnosis. Instead, upon examining Ulys, he had referred him to Dr. John Hancock Douglas, the preeminent throat specialist in the East. Ulys and Dr. Douglas had met professionally early in the war, while Ulys led the assault on Fort Donelson and Dr. Douglas served on the United States Sanitary Commission.
“I have an ulceration at the base of my tongue,” Ulys informed Julia, Fred, and Ida, after consulting with Dr. Douglas. “The doctor applied a muriate of cocaine to the swollen area, and it gave me immediate relief. He also treated me with lodoform to reduce the pain and disinfect the sore so I can eat and sleep. I’m to visit him twice a day so he can reapply the medicines.”
“Twice a day for how long?” asked Fred, brow furrowing.
“He didn’t say. Until it’s run its course, I suppose.” Ulys smiled briefly and began climbing the stairs to his study, but then he paused, his hand on the banister. “On my way home, I stopped at the Century offices and told Smith that I want to write my memoirs.”
The four articles he had already planned would form the foundation for his book, Ulys told them that evening at supper. He expected that it would be a relatively simple matter to bind them together with accounts of his other battles and campaigns and stories from his youth. He worked throughout October, his newfound enjoyment of researching and writing a delight for Julia to see, but his appetite was little improved from before he began Dr. Douglas’s treatments, and Julia and Ida agreed that he had lost weight.
“You know what a stoic your father can be,” Julia said to Fred and Ida in a hushed conversation while Ulys toiled over his manuscript in his second-floor study at the top of stairs, alone except for his longtime valet, Harrison Tyrell. The faithful Harrison, as the family referred to him affectionately, watched over Ulys almost possessively, bringing him fresh paper when he filled a page, adjusting the scarf about his neck when it came loose, plumping a pillow for his back. “Perhaps Pa hasn’t been entirely forthcoming with the doctor. If Dr. Douglas truly understood how much he suffers, he might offer a more aggressive treatment.”
They agreed that Julia and Fred
should call on Dr. Douglas and share their concerns.
Dr. Douglas was a handsome man perhaps two years younger than Ulys, with flowing gray hair and an abundant beard. His expression grew progressively more serious as Julia and Fred took turns describing Ulys’s symptoms and suffering at home, but not for the reason they imagined.
“Mrs. Grant, Colonel Grant, I’m going to be as frank with you as I was with the general,” he said. “General Grant has cancer. A carcinoma at the base of his tongue has spread to several other small lesions in his throat. Over time the cancer will grow into his neck, making it nearly impossible for him to eat, and eventually, to breathe. The progress of the disease will be lengthy, excruciatingly painful, and ultimately fatal. All we can do is to make General Grant as comfortable as possible in the time remaining to him.”
Julia sat utterly still, ears ringing. Fred queried the doctor further, but the back-and-forth of questions and replies scarcely registered in Julia’s mind until Dr. Douglas addressed her directly. “Mrs. Grant,” he said distinctly, as if aware he was speaking to her through a thick fog of shock, “I could instruct you how to apply the topical pain relievers to your husband’s throat. It isn’t a difficult procedure, and it would spare him the inconvenience of coming to me for treatment twice a day.”
Mrs. Grant and Madame Jule Page 40
