Mrs. Grant and Madame Jule

by Jennifer Chiaverini

  “This is natural. Sometimes the general will feel like giving up. Sometimes he’ll refuse to eat and be unable to sleep. He’ll reject his work and become fatalistic. This is the normal and necessary preparation of the mind for a person who is terminally ill.” The doctor rested his hand on her shoulder and held her gaze. “The general is stronger and more disciplined than an ordinary man, and I believe eventually he’ll come to accept his illness and resolve to work through his pain.”

  Julia’s eyes filled with tears, and she thanked him, though she wanted to cry out that she did not accept that Ulys’s illness was fatal and would never encourage him to do so.

  • • •

  Ulys’s melancholy persisted as the year came to a close, but when he heard that his old friend William Sherman was in New York, he relaxed his ban on visitors and invited him to call. Julia knew what an effort it was for Ulys to conceal his suffering for the two hours he and Sherman sat in the library and talked. Ulys told him he was writing his memoirs and that he was ill but was recovering under his doctors’ care. Afterward, as Julia escorted him to the door, Sherman paused in the foyer. “Mrs. Grant,” he asked suddenly, “we are friends, are we not?”

  “I should certainly hope so, after all these years.”

  “Then may I beg the liberty of a friend and ask you a direct question?”

  Julia felt a stir of trepidation. They should have known Sherman would recognize Ulys’s pain and thinness for what they were. What would she say if he asked her for the truth? “Of course you may,” she replied, steeling herself.

  “Forgive me, but when I look around your beautiful home, I can’t mistake the signs of your material distress.”

  “Oh, that? Well, yes.” Julia uttered a tiny, helpless laugh. “It’s true that we aren’t as comfortable as we were before the failure of Grant & Ward, but Ulys’s writing will provide for us.”

  Sherman frowned slightly as he bowed and bade her farewell, and a few days later, the Grants learned that he had raised a subscription for Ulys’s benefit. “I appreciate both the motive and the friendship which have dictated this course on your part,” Ulys immediately wrote in response, “but, on mature reflection, I regard it as due myself and my family to decline this preferred generosity.”

  To Ulys’s chagrin, his letter found its way into the hands of the press, and it was published in the New-York Tribune on January 8. Then, mere days after he hinted at his illness in a letter to another friend, mentioning that he was weak and could not sleep, a Philadelphia newspaper reported that Ulys was ill, and attributed his condition to his financial difficulties. When the New York press besieged Ulys’s doctors, Ulys scripted their answer: He was ill, but cheerful and comfortable, and they expected a quick recovery.

  Nothing could have been further from the truth. Not even Julia could pretend otherwise any longer. “My tears blind me,” she wrote to Mrs. Hillyer, her dear friend from their St. Louis and Holly Springs days. “General Grant is ill. I cannot write how ill.”

  And yet, in the bleakest midwinter, Ulys seemed to steady himself, and his spirits noticeably improved. Every morning he rose early, allowed Harrison to wrap him in a warm shawl, and went to his study to resume writing.

  “Whether those persistent rumors in the press about his poor health have spurred him on, or he has remembered his commitment to Twain,” Julia confided to Dr. Douglas, “he seems to have discovered a new wellspring of strength.”

  “I’m not surprised,” Dr. Douglas replied. “I believe the general now understands the adversary he faces, and he has proposed to fight it out on this line if it takes all winter.”

  Julia glowed with recognition of the doctor’s paraphrase of her brave victor’s famous words from the Battle of Spotsylvania Court House—so unexpected, so perfectly suited to his ordeal.

  • • •

  Twain had traveled most of the winter on a speaking tour, and when he returned to New York in the last week of February, he promptly called at the Grant residence. Ulys was upstairs in his study, his writing momentarily interrupted by Dr. Douglas’s regular examination. Although Ulys could barely speak above a hoarse whisper, while Dr. Douglas finished his tasks, Ulys and Twain chatted about his new novel, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, which had taken him nine years to write. It had been out only a few days and he and his publisher were still awaiting the first reviews.

  “For a while the book seemed plagued by bad luck,” Twain confided, settling himself into a chair. “Some unscrupulous scoundrels were trying to sell their own versions of my novel, and a lascivious engraver nearly sabotaged our first printing with a deliberate error to one of the illustrations that showed one of my characters, Silas Phelps, with his—” He caught himself and glanced at Julia. “Well, let’s just say the picture left no question that he’s a male of the species.”

  Julia smiled in spite of herself, and the men laughed—all save Ulys, who struggled not to, for the great pain laughing caused him. Twain regarded him curiously for a long moment. “The New York World reported yesterday that you’re suffering not from cancer,” he said, “but from a case of chronic inflammation of the tongue brought on by excessive smoking. I was very glad to see the news.”

  “Ah, yes,” said Ulys, smiling faintly. “I read that too. If only it had been true.”

  “The general’s condition is serious,” added Dr. Douglas, “and it will worsen.”

  Julia could bear no more. She hurried downstairs to the parlor, where she sank into a chair and fought back sobs. Soon she heard Fred escorting Twain to the door, discussing the manuscript and a few details in the publishing contract that had yet to be settled.

  Their footsteps paused in the foyer. “I tell you in strictest confidence that my father is very ill, and he isn’t expected to recover,” Julia heard Fred say. “His doctors believe he may have only a few weeks to live.”

  “I had no idea it was so serious,” said Twain. “How could a man so robust decline so quickly?”

  “Don’t be concerned—”

  “How could I be otherwise? Your father is a very dear friend of mine.”

  “What I mean is that you shouldn’t worry that his work will be affected,” said Fred. “My father writes diligently each day, and everything is proceeding on schedule. The first volume of his memoirs is finished, and work on the second is progressing very well.”

  “My dear fellow,” replied Twain, his voice gruff with grief and kindness, “I’m far less concerned about the book than the man.”

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  MARCH–JULY 1885

  Like every other resident of the city, Jule had known of General Grant’s poor health for months. Nevertheless, on the first day of March she was shocked to read on the front page of The New York Times a bold headline surrounded by a black border: “GRANT IS DYING.”

  Other New York papers quickly took up the story. “Sinking into the Grave!” one announced. “Dying Slowly from Cancer,” lamented another, and a third, “Gen. Grant’s Friends Give Up Hope.”

  “Mrs. Grant would never give up hope,” said Jule, disbelieving. “She would pray for her husband until she had no voice left before she would give up hope.”

  Gabriel put an arm around her shoulders and gently turned her away from the lurid proclamations of despair and imminent death. “Do you want to call on Mrs. Grant to offer your sympathies?”

  In an instant, alternate scenes played out in her imagination: a tearful reunion on Julia’s doorstep, a hasty retreat as the mistress hurled recriminations at her faithless servant, bewildered questions evoked by an utter lack of recognition.

  “I don’t think she would thank me to intrude upon her now,” Jule replied.

  But she could not resist strolling past the Grant residence late the following afternoon, drawn by sympathy and sorrow. Reporters from all the New York newspapers had assumed posts on Sixty-sixth Street, and Jul
e was appalled to observe several try to peer into the second-floor window—General Grant’s study, someone in the crowd said. By the time she returned later that week, reporters from Baltimore, Boston, Philadelphia, and Washington had joined them, and after a fortnight, well-traveled newspapermen from Chicago, St. Louis, Los Angeles, and San Francisco swelled the crowd. It was called “the death watch,” Jule learned to her horror, and at any given hour, throngs of curious citizens threatened to outnumber the press.

  Day after day, she found herself almost unwillingly joining them.

  She did not recognize the dignified Negro servant who braved the gauntlet of reporters nearly every day as he came to and from the house, apparently to run errands for the family. Harrison—or so the newspapermen addressed him, shouting questions whenever he left or returned—must have joined the household after she had run away.

  Harrison impressed Jule with his calm response to the barrage of queries. “The general is fine, thank you,” he might say, or “I’ll tell him you wish him well, sir,” or his apparent favorite, “General Grant grows better every day, thank you.”

  “He doesn’t mean it,” Jule told Gabriel one day when he accompanied her on what had become an almost daily vigil. “I can tell from his face, from the look in his eye. The headlines are true. The general is dying.”

  Gabriel pressed her hand where it rested in the crook of his elbow. “General Grant saved the Union, he and Mr. Lincoln both.”

  “He wasn’t a perfect man or a perfect president, but he was a loving father and a devoted husband.” Jule took a deep, shaky breath. “Listen to me, talking like he’s already gone.” She fixed her gaze on a window that seemed to look into a parlor, willing Julia to come to it, to glance outside, to spot her in the crowd. “He was always kind to me, though, me and all the Dent slaves.”

  “We’re all sinners in need of the Lord’s redemptive grace and forgiveness.” Gabriel’s voice was as quiet as if he stood at the ailing man’s deathbed, yet it rang with love and certainty. “General Grant and his wife too.”

  “I do forgive her,” said Jule, understanding what he did not say. “She couldn’t help herself. She did the best she could with what she thought to be right.”

  She watched each window in turn, but the curtains were drawn as if the household was already in mourning.

  “Let’s go home,” she said, gazing up at her beloved husband, heartened by the sight of him, by the miraculous fact of his presence by her side. “I’ll come back at Easter and place flowers on their doorstep, but for now, we’ve paid our respects, and I think it kinder to leave the family in peace.”

  After all, at long last, her own heart was at peace.

  • • •

  With Ulys’s consent, his physicians decided to release twice-daily bulletins, carefully phrased to divulge little about the inexorable progress of his disease. Julia knew that their purpose was not to keep the public informed, but to preserve Ulys’s privacy.

  “Everything must be done to ensure that the general gets sufficient rest and keeps to a regular schedule so he can finish his book,” said Dr. Shrady in the corridor outside Ulys’s bedchamber while he dozed fitfully within.

  His emphatic remark met with nods of agreement from Dr. Douglas, Badeau, Fred, and even Harrison, but Julia felt her heart cinch. “No,” she said emphatically. “The harder he works, the weaker he becomes. He must abandon his writing—or at least cut back on it drastically—and conserve his strength.”

  The men regarded her with astonishment. “Forgive me, madam,” said Dr. Douglas, “but the general’s interest in completing his memoir is all that prolongs his life.”

  “I’ll read to him instead,” Julia countered. “Reverend Newman will divert him with scripture and prayer.”

  “I’ve noticed a direct correlation between the general’s ability to work and his desire to live,” said Dr. Shrady, shaking his head. “If you remove one, you will almost certainly remove the other.”

  “My husband’s condition worsens every day. He requires rest, not more toil.”

  “But, madam—”

  “I will finish my book.”

  The thin, hoarse whisper drifting from the bedchamber silenced them.

  “I will finish it.” Ulys coughed, inhaled deeply, and let out a long, shuddering breath. “Julia, this book will provide an income for you and the children when I am gone. I must finish it.”

  Heartsick, Julia abandoned her protests.

  A few days later, while reporters circled like vultures and Ulys worked and wrote through the pain, Grover Cleveland was inaugurated as the twenty-second president of the United States. On the last day of President Chester A. Arthur’s administration, Twain joined Ulys, Julia, Fred, and Badeau at the Grant residence. For months, General Sherman had acted the gadfly in Washington, lobbying Congress to reinstate Ulys to the rank of lieutenant general, thus restoring the military pension he had relinquished to become president—and to allow Sherman to assume the role of general in chief. A combat veteran himself, President Arthur had made Ulys’s reinstatement one of the primary concerns of his administration, but if the Senate did not approve the bill before his term expired, it would not pass.

  The hands of the mantel clock turned slowly, and in the early afternoon, a telegram from the president pro tem of the Senate finally arrived. As Fred read it, a look of deep satisfaction filled his visage. “It’s done,” he said, handing the telegram to his father. “You’re reinstated. Another victory for General Sherman.”

  Ulys read the telegram, a faint smile on his lips.

  “Hurrah! Our old commander is back,” Julia exclaimed, embracing Ulys tenderly.

  As a retired lieutenant general Ulys would earn an annual salary of thirteen thousand five hundred dollars, and when the time came, as his widow Julia would receive a stipend of five thousand dollars a year for the rest of her life.

  That would suffice, Julia thought. Ulys could set his book aside and rest, and perhaps his strength would return and he would astonish doctors and reporters and naysayers alike by vanquishing the sinister disease once and for all.

  But even as hope rose in her, giddy and effervescent, it burst against the surface of rough, unrelenting truth, and her sudden rush of ebullience went flat and still.

  She knew Ulys would not stop writing—just as she knew that even if he did, it would not add a single day to his life.

  • • •

  A week after The New York Times ran its devastating headline, Chief of Police Adam Gunner informed Julia that he had assigned officers to patrol Sixty-sixth Street in order to control the reporters and keep the ever-increasing crowds at bay. Devout citizens prayed loudly on the sidewalk in front of their home. Every day the mails brought home remedies shipped from all corners of the nation, potions and teas and plasters that were guaranteed to cure the suffering general. Veterans’ groups and women’s auxiliary clubs sent gifts, and admirers from all over the world sent letters and telegrams. On one occasion Julia glanced out the window to discover a one-armed veteran marching back and forth in front of their home as if passing in review before his general—or, as she was suddenly, dizzyingly reminded, as if he were an honor guard at the catafalque of a slain leader.

  In mid-March, Ulys was heartened to be reunited with his precious daughter. Nellie’s husband had finally granted her permission to return to New York from England, but he had refused to allow her to bring their three children—Algernon, who had just celebrated his eighth birthday; Vivien, almost seven years of age; and little Rosemary, four and one-half. Nellie had become a lovely matron of not quite thirty years, her skin as luminous as it was the day she wed, her brown eyes as soft and guileless, her thick, dark hair shining like rich satin in a Grecian twist with a long cascade down the back. And yet there was a sadness in her expression that pained Julia to see, for she knew it sprang from a broken heart.

 
Ulys brightened beneath his daughter’s affectionate gaze and smiled when she spoke to him in their familiar, companionable way. Only when alone with Julia did Nellie’s composure falter. “I didn’t expect to find him so transformed,” she confided, choking back sobs. Julia folded Nellie in her embrace and murmured words that had no power to comfort.

  The invigorating effects of Nellie’s arrival proved sadly ephemeral. To help Ulys conserve his waning strength, Twain arranged for a stenographer to assist him in preparing the manuscript. In the third week of March, Twain arrived at the Grant residence and triumphantly presented Ulys with the proofs for the first volume of his memoirs, which Ulys accepted with a silent nod and a look that spoke of pride and triumph.

  On the evening of March 25, Ulys suffered a violent choking fit, so severe that he was promptly sedated with a mixture of cocaine and morphine. He woke the next morning ready to resume his work, but another dreadful choking fit struck that evening and every evening that followed, until on March 30, his condition had become so precarious that his doctors warned that he would not survive the night. Ulys’s good friend Matias Romero made a statement to the swarms of reporters, and Julia sat vigil at her beloved husband’s bedside, listening for his last labored breath and weeping.

  Yet Ulys did not die. He struggled between life and death, but by the evening of April 1, his breathing grew steady and he slept peacefully. The next day he was out of bed, walking gingerly around the room on Fred’s strong arm. He slept soundly that night too, and the next morning he rose, asked Harrison to wrap him in a shawl, and went to his study to write. A few days later, on April 9, Ulys asked Dr. Shrady if he might celebrate the anniversary of General Lee’s surrender at Appomattox with one or two puffs on a cigar. Dr. Shrady consented, and so Ulys indulged in his old vice one last time.

  Ulys determinedly pushed on at the same relentless pace as before, drafting page after page, often dictating for three or four hours at a stretch. Anxious, Julia urged him to rest, to conserve his strength, but Ulys firmly rejected her appeals. “As time goes on, I’ll have fewer days without pain,” he said. “I must work when I can.”