Mrs. Grant and Madame Jule

by Jennifer Chiaverini

  By early April, Twain was closely examining the proofs and making notes for possible revisions, but his suggestions were so minor and so few in number that Ulys became concerned. “Maybe Twain is silent about my work because he believes my writing isn’t that good,” he fretted hoarsely one afternoon as Julia, Ida, and Nellie tidied his study.

  “You’re a wonderful writer, Pa,” Nellie declared. “I’ve saved and cherished every letter you’ve ever sent me.”

  Ulys looked gratified, but he rasped, “You, my dear, are a fond daughter and a forgiving audience. The vast majority of my readers will not be.”

  Troubled, Julia discussed his remarks with Fred, and when Twain called the next day, Fred detained him before he could disappear into Ulys’s study. “I thought you should be aware,” he said, “that the general is concerned about your opinion of his work.”

  “He shouldn’t be,” replied Twain, bemused, his hand already on the banister, his foot on the bottom step.

  “Perhaps not,” Julia said, “but you’ve never offered any remarks about his work, whether to praise or to censure.”

  Twain’s brow furrowed beneath his shaggy mane. “I thought the excellent quality of his writing was self-evident,” he said, looking from Fred to Julia for confirmation. “It never occurred to me that a man who had defeated General Lee and had governed a great nation could worry about so small a thing as a book.”

  A few days later, Julia was sitting with Ulys and Twain in the library while Ulys read letters and Twain reviewed new pages for the second volume. “I’ve recently reread Caesar’s Commentaries, and I can’t help comparing it with your memoirs,” Twain suddenly remarked. “In my judgment—which I’m sure we all agree is authoritative—the same merits distinguish both books: clarity of statement, directness, simplicity, unpretentiousness, manifest truthfulness, fairness and justice toward friend and foe alike, soldierly candor and frankness, and soldierly avoidance of flowery speech. It is my opinion that both books share equally in greatness.”

  He promptly returned his attention to the manuscript.

  After a long moment of silence, Ulys whispered, “I’m glad my book meets with your approval.”

  Twain raised a finger in warning. “Of course, I have not yet read the whole thing. I may be obliged to revise my opinion later.”

  “Mr. Twain,” Julia admonished, but Ulys smiled.

  • • •

  On Easter Sunday, Ulys waved from the window of his study to the kindhearted admirers who left abundant, fragrant bouquets on their doorstep in honor of the holiday. Later, leaning on Fred’s strong arm, he came out to the front stoop to listen to a serenade of hymns sung by the Excelsior chapter of the Masonic Council—the man who had always barely tolerated music rousing himself to acknowledge the singers’ respect and affection. That afternoon, when his doctors issued their usual medical statement, Ulys included a note thanking friends and strangers alike for their prayerful sympathy and interest. Julia had suggested the addition of the word “prayerful,” and Ulys had obligingly allowed it.

  Less than two weeks later, Dr. Shrady discovered that the cancer had spread to the right side of Ulys’s jaw and that his mouth and gums were covered in malignant growths.

  • • •

  April 27 was Ulys’s sixty-third birthday, and Julia was determined to celebrate as usual. “A carriage ride through the city would be a fine birthday present to myself,” he said hoarsely and settled in to tour the city with Julia, Nellie, and Harrison. He enjoyed the ride so much that when they returned home, he suggested they set out again. His grandchildren, innocently unaware of the shadow lying over their beloved grandpapa, drew pictures for him and recited poems, and Julia almost wept to see how tenderly he thanked them and kissed their sweet faces. A few close friends called to give him their regards, and Andrew Carnegie had sixty-three beautiful roses delivered. In the late afternoon, the New York Seventh National Guard Regiment passed in review before the house, where Ulys stood at attention at his study window.

  That evening at supper, Julia decorated the table with sixty-three candles, bathing the faces of their loved ones in gentle, benevolent light. Julia and Ulys exchanged looks across the table that revealed the same unspoken thought—they had been truly blessed. They had known great love and great joy amid the pain and suffering of life, and in spite of the great grief they all knew awaited them, their hearts were full, their joys abundant.

  • • •

  By that time, Ulys had finished his four articles for The Century and had plunged into the most difficult part of his memoirs, the months from the end of the Wilderness campaign until General Lee’s surrender at Appomattox. He had selected the maps he wanted to include, outlined the remaining chapters, and made copious notes on the material yet to be covered. The force that compelled him had not diminished, and yet Julia could not mistake the subtle changes to his writing routine. His penmanship, once strong and bold, had become spindly, the letters weakly formed, the strokes wavering. Fred had taken to drawing lines on the blank pages with a straightedge to ease the strain on Ulys’s failing eyes.

  But the biggest change came with the abrupt departure of Adam Badeau.

  As Ulys’s writing had hit its stride, and as Twain had become more involved in reviewing and editing the manuscript, Badeau had been relegated to the position of clerk, fetching maps and reports, sorting notes, and providing encouragement. Eventually the disgruntled Badeau moved out of his room in the Grant residence, and soon thereafter, reports appeared in The New York World that Ulys was not the author of his memoirs but had delegated the task to a ghostwriter.

  “The work upon his new book about which so much has been said is the work of General Adam Badeau,” the reporter claimed. “General Grant, I have no doubt, has furnished all of the material and all of the ideas in the memoirs as far as they have been prepared; but Badeau has done the work of composition. The most that General Grant has done upon this book has been to prepare the rough notes and memoranda for its various chapters.”

  Julia, who had witnessed every day of the book’s composition and had measured the enormous physical toll the effort had exacted upon her husband, recalled the lessons of their years in the White House, when she had learned not to trust the press. But whereas she was indignant, Twain was enraged, and he vowed to sue the newspaper for libel. “The general’s work this morning is rather damaging evidence against The World’s intrepid lie,” he stormed to Fred and Julia, pacing in their library while upstairs in his study Ulys dictated new material to the stenographer. “A libel suit ought to be instituted at once. No compromise or apology will do. Press for punitive damages. Damages that will cripple—yes, disable—that paper financially.”

  “Let’s try a more circumspect approach first,” said Fred, raising his hands, but the calming gesture had no effect upon the furious author. “This story is nonsense and can easily be struck aside, and I’d rather not subject my father to the rigors of a lawsuit.”

  When Julia chimed in her agreement, Twain reluctantly agreed, and so Fred issued a simple statement explaining that General Grant was dictating his account of the Appomattox campaign to a stenographer, but every word was his own, a perfectly straightforward and lucid account drawn from his dispatches and other records. Ulys followed that with a letter to the editor, refuting the accusations point by point.

  “It’s far better to embarrass The World than to sue it,” Twain later acknowledged, but he was not yet satisfied, and with Ulys’s blessing, he tapped his network of friends within the press to track down the source of the false claim. Soon he was able to confirm what Julia already suspected—Badeau had sparked the rumors himself. Then the once trusted aide committed what Julia considered an unforgivable offense: He wrote to Ulys demanding additional compensation for his past contributions to the memoirs—and in exchange he agreed not to claim authorship of the work.

  “But he is not the
author,” Julia protested. “He demands that we pay him not to lie?”

  Summoning up his boundless resolve, Ulys adamantly refused to capitulate, responding in a strongly worded letter that the two men “must give up all association so far as the preparation of any literary work goes which bears my signature.” Ulys had written so prolifically—plans of battle, instructions, reports, official documents bearing the presidential seal—that the public had become too accustomed to his style of writing to believe that the words had come from anyone else’s pen.

  • • •

  In late May, Ulys began the final sections of his memoir, spending up to five hours a day writing and dictating his account of the end of the siege of Petersburg and General Lee’s retreat to Appomattox. By then his neck was so swollen from the unrelenting spread of the cancer that he could barely speak. His pain kept him awake, so while the rest of the household slept, he stayed up alone working on his book, late into the night and into the early hours before dawn. Sometimes Julia woke to discover him dozing fitfully upon his two favorite leather chairs set facing one another, manuscript pages scattered on his lap and on the floor all around.

  On June 8, Ulys informed Twain that he had finished the first draft of the entire second volume. There was still much to do, he warned in a shakily scrawled note, for he intended to review every page.

  To give their patient respite from the oppressive summer heat of the city, Dr. Douglas and Dr. Shrady decided he should relocate to Mount McGregor in upstate New York. Mr. Joseph Drexel, a Philadelphia financier and philanthropist, had offered his summer home adjacent to the luxurious Balmoral Hotel. “There among the pines,” Dr. Douglas told the Grants, “the pure air is especially beneficial to patients suffering as General Grant does.”

  As for his precious manuscript, “I’m not yet finished,” Ulys told Twain, “but I’ll be done in time, certainly by September fifteenth, when the family plans to return to New York.”

  No one—not Julia, not even Ulys himself—expected him to see another autumn.

  • • •

  Mr. Vanderbilt provided the train that carried Ulys, Julia, Nellie, and Fred, Ida, and their two children north to Mount McGregor. It boasted a locomotive, a luxurious dining car, and Mr. Vanderbilt’s private coach, where porters carefully placed Ulys’s two comfortable leather chairs. Dr. Douglas, Harrison Tyrell, nurse Henry McQueeney, and Ulys’s stenographer, Noble E. Dawson, completed the party that left New York on the hot, sultry morning of June 16. Word had spread that Ulys was leaving, and a crowd of onlookers saw them off from home, and another bade them good-bye as they boarded the train at Grand Central Station.

  The train chugged through the Hudson Valley, lush and green with the foliage of early summer. Ulys dozed in his chairs dressed in a long coat and skullcap, his neck wrapped in a scarf despite the heat, his chairs turned away from the smoke of the locomotive. Silent crowds gathered at the depots to pay their respects, and now and then, Julia spotted a gray-haired veteran standing at attention among them. Ulys slept through most of the salutes, but Julia woke him when they passed West Point so he could see the academy where he had set his life’s course.

  An honor guard met them at Saratoga, where they were obliged to change trains, but although the soldiers had hoped for the general’s inspection, Ulys was too weak to do more than nod and raise his cane to them as he hobbled on Harrison’s arm from Mr. Vanderbilt’s coach to the smaller-gauge train that would carry him the last twelve miles of his journey.

  When they arrived at Mount McGregor, the cool, fresh air seemed to revive him, and Julia was well pleased with Mr. Drexel’s cottage, a spacious, airy, two-story home with a broad, wraparound porch, furnished simply but elegantly with everything they needed. Ulys would have the front bedchamber, where large windows offered abundant morning sunshine and views of the surrounding forested hills of northern pine. Dr. Douglas had arranged for their meals to be brought to the cottage from the nearby Balmoral Hotel to spare Ulys the walk.

  As Julia and Ida saw to the unpacking, a crowd of curious onlookers wandered over from the hotel to observe them from a discreet distance. Ulys merely nodded to them politely from a comfortable chair on the porch and fixed his gaze upon the scenery. The people dispersed before Julia joined him there, pulling a chair close enough to touch his. “What do you think of our pretty cottage?” she asked, taking his hand and drawing it onto her lap.

  “Very pleasant,” he whispered. “A good place to finish my work.”

  • • •

  The air was cool and crisp that night, and Ulys enjoyed his first restful sleep in many weeks. In the morning he woke refreshed and curious, and to Julia’s surprise, he announced his intention to go exploring. Harrison accompanied him as he slowly but steadily climbed a nearby knoll. At the top was a wooden bench that afforded a magnificent view across the valley toward Saratoga, but Ulys paid for the prize with exhaustion.

  Later that afternoon, Harrison arranged Ulys’s two favorite leather chairs in his bedchamber, and on a nearby table, Fred set out his research materials in the same order Ulys had kept them in New York. His voice had become too weak to allow for dictation, so he wrote in his own shaky hand and gave the pages to Dawson to copy. Sometimes Dawson would read aloud sections of the manuscript, and Ulys would nod in approval or shake his head and scrawl notes for revisions.

  As June passed in soft breezes scented with pine, Ulys worked on his book, often in his bedchamber, sometimes on the broad, shaded porch, while their grandchildren played among the trees, their footfalls cushioned by a carpet of fallen pine needles. On June 27, sure that he was within pages of completing the second volume, Ulys wrote to Twain at his summer home at Quarry Farm asking his help in revising his Century articles and making corresponding changes to the memoir. When Twain arrived the next morning, he said nothing about Ulys’s dramatically altered appearance—his once thick brown hair and beard had gone entirely white, and his famously rugged frame had become skeletal—but the author’s stricken expression told Julia that Ulys’s deterioration had not gone unnoticed.

  Twain had intended to stay with them at the cottage only until the revisions were complete, but even after he and Ulys were satisfied, he stayed on when he heard that Jesse would soon join them. Twain and Jesse—twenty-seven, four years married, and living in California—were partners in a prospective business plan to build a railroad from Constantinople to the Persian Gulf, one of many such unusual projects in which Twain habitually invested.

  “We’re all coming together again,” Ulys remarked happily later that evening as Julia helped him back into his two leather chairs, which he preferred to the bed, and kissed him good night.

  “Not all of us,” she said wistfully. Ulys nodded, probably thinking she referred to Buck and his family, who in April had been blessed with their third child, a baby girl. Julia was thinking of them, of course, but also of all the loved ones they had lost through the years. Mamma and Papa. Ulys’s parents, his brothers Simpson and Orvil, and his sister Clara. Nellie’s first precious baby, who had died within a year of his birth—too many losses. A family circle was never truly complete except in memories and in hopes for the future.

  Even after Jesse settled in, Twain lingered—hoping, Julia suspected, that Ulys would finish his manuscript and allow Twain to take it home for editing. When it became apparent that Ulys was not quite ready, Twain made arrangements to return to Quarry Farm without it. On the day of his departure, he received a telegram from the publishers, which he immediately read to Ulys and Julia. Although the subscription campaign was only half over, sixty thousand editions of Ulys’s memoirs had already been ordered. “This will guarantee you royalties of at least three hundred thousand dollars,” Twain announced, jubilant.

  Julia’s head spun so dizzyingly that she was obliged to sit on the arm of Ulys’s porch chair. “I never dreamed it would be so much.”

  “I am astounded,”
Ulys said in a thin whisper. “I cannot say how relieved I am that my family will have this provision, and I have you to thank for it.”

  “Not so,” said Twain gruffly, clearing his throat and tucking the telegram into his pocket. “The credit is all yours, General. You’re writing the thing.”

  Later that evening, Ulys struggled so desperately to breathe that Dr. Shrady dosed him with morphine, which Ulys hated because it clouded his mind and rendered him unable to write. But he had little choice. Every day violent fits of coughing shook him fiercely, ceasing only after Ulys choked on his own blood, vomited, and thereby cleared his airways. Julia found it terrible to witness, but she steeled herself and held Ulys’s hand as he suffered, soothing him as best she could, driving her own anguish inward so he would feel only her strength.

  • • •

  Ulys wrote on, slowly and deliberately, his work frequently interrupted by old friends who traveled from near and far to pay their regards to the ailing leader—in truth, Julia knew, to say good-bye.

  In early July, Fred arranged for the use of a bath chair, a wheeled conveyance that reminded Julia of the rickshaws she and Ulys had seen in Japan. Harrison would assist Ulys into the chair and wheel it wherever Ulys directed him to go—to the shade of a stand of pines, to a sunny bank above a trickling creek, along the forest path where birds trilled in the boughs overhead and squirrels and rabbits rustled the underbrush below.

  Julia often accompanied them on their excursions, and as they walked along she reminisced aloud about other scenic places they had explored in days long past—the beautiful, leafy wood at White Haven, the snowy woodlands of Michigan, the marvelous landscapes they had traversed on their world tour, the White House lawn, the pretty gardens Julia had cultivated wherever they had made their homes.