Mrs. Grant and Madame Jule

by Jennifer Chiaverini

  The family was expecting them, and Jule would not keep them waiting so that she might pursue Julia and—do what? Demand recognition? An apology for half a lifetime of forced servitude? Gabriel had taught her to forgive, and even the most humble and sincere apology from her former mistress would give Jule nothing she wanted that she did not already possess.

  Gabriel was waiting at the church where their grandchildren would likely finish choir rehearsal any minute now. Charles and his family were visiting from Boston, and Jule had a lavish supper planned with all of their favorite delicacies. Jule needed nothing from Julia Grant. Her life and her heart were full.

  “I still say she should have known you,” Dorothy said. “The years have not changed you as much as all that.”

  Oh, but they had, in ways Dorothy in her freeborn innocence could not possibly understand—and for that Jule was thankful.

  “It’s all right,” Jule said, patting her daughter’s arm affectionately. “I always did see Julia Grant more clearly than she saw me.”

  • • •

  It was, perhaps, an unlikely friendship, the fondness that had developed between Mrs. General Grant, former First Lady of the United States, and the wife of the president of the Confederacy, but the two widows had discovered much in common when they met in the summer of 1893. Julia had left the oppressive heat of Washington behind for the cooler climate of Cranston’s Hotel on the Hudson, and when she learned that Mrs. Varina Davis had checked in too, she reflected for an hour or so before resolving to make her acquaintance.

  The bellman kindly told her the number of Mrs. Davis’s suite, and soon thereafter, Julia rapped upon the door. After a moment it opened, and a stout woman of seventy-five years—like herself—with large dark eyes, an olive complexion, and fine threads of gray in her dark hair, stood before her.

  “Good afternoon,” the woman said, a question in her voice, although she could not have failed to recognize her visitor.

  “I am Mrs. Grant,” Julia said simply.

  Mrs. Davis extended her hand. “I am very glad to meet you.”

  She invited Julia in, where they enjoyed a cordial chat, expressing great pleasure in finally making each other’s acquaintance and parting with hopes that they would meet again. Their words were no mere pleasantries, for as the days passed they were frequent companions, strolling on the verandah together, talking over tea, going for carriage drives along the river. They were well aware that the sight of the two famous Civil War widows together delighted the other guests, who saw in their blossoming friendship the perfect symbol for the reconciliation of North and South, once so bitterly divided.

  Julia was amused by the fuss made over their simple, quiet meetings. While they were still enjoying their visits at Cranston’s, a front-page article in The New York Times announced, “Celebrated Women Meet,” and the next day reported that their acquaintance promised “to ripen into warm friendship.” The prediction proved true, for after they returned to their homes in the city, where they resided about twenty blocks apart in Manhattan, they exchanged calls and went for carriage rides together, occasions that rarely escaped the notice of the press.

  Julia found nothing so extraordinary about her friendship with Mrs. Davis that it merited mention on the front page of The New York Times. They were both Southern women raised in slaveholding families. They had both been public figures by virtue of marriages to prominent gentlemen, although Julia tactfully refrained from noting that she did not consider Mrs. Davis a former First Lady, because like Ulys, Julia did not accept that the Confederacy had ever been a sovereign nation. They both enjoyed writing; Mrs. Davis was certainly the more successful of the two, with a biography of her husband and numerous magazine and newspaper articles to her credit, compared to Julia’s mere handful of pieces. They had both been criticized for allegedly wielding too much influence over their husbands, and they had both experienced the terrible war from a close, intense, and unique perspective. Privately they agreed that northerners and southerners were more alike than they were different, more alike than they realized. They could also discuss frankly, as they could not with their northern friends, the South’s “peculiar institution,” which they had once accepted as the natural order of the world, and which they had eventually learned had never been a benevolent system established by divine law as they had been taught.

  “I think, deep down, we always knew it was wrong,” Julia had once confessed to Mrs. Davis. She had never admitted as much to anyone, not even Ulys. “We reassured ourselves with the opinions of our forebears and justified our actions with carefully selected verses from scripture, but we must have known.”

  “A dear friend of mine, a South Carolinian whose husband served in Mr. Davis’s administration, told me that she often wondered if slavery was not a curse to any land,” Mrs. Davis had replied, sighing. “‘God forgive us, but ours is a monstrous system and wrong and full of iniquity,’ she said. I still remember the ferocity and shame in her expression as she spoke.”

  “But that’s over now.”

  “Yes, and now we are all equal, white and colored, just as we are all one united nation, North and South.”

  Mrs. Davis spoke ironically, as was her habit—but something in the lilt of her voice reminded Julia of Jule. Months would pass in which Julia would not think of her erstwhile maid, and then something—the glimpse of a dove-gray shawl, the fragrance of almond oil or lavender, an advertisement for ladies’ hair pomade—would call her to mind with such vivid intensity that they might have parted at the train station in Louisville only yesterday. Once, in New York, when Ulys was yet living, still toiling over his memoirs, Julia had glanced out his study window and imagined she spotted Jule among the people holding vigil on Sixty-sixth Street. For a moment Julia had been tempted to hurry outside to speak to the strangely familiar woman, but a reluctance to expose herself to the stares and whispers of the curious throng restrained her. She knew, at heart, that the woman could not possibly have been Jule, who—by all rights and in all likelihood—had never forgiven Julia for keeping her enslaved. Jule, if she yet lived, had surely forgotten their ginger-and-cream days, though to Julia they often seemed more real, more present, than the long, lonely years she had lived without Ulys.

  Julia’s friendship with Mrs. Davis endured even after Julia sold her New York residence and moved away, first to spend several months in California with Buck and Jesse and their families, and then back to Washington, where she resided contentedly with Nellie and her children. She and Mrs. Davis kept in touch through frequent letters, for although their friendship was new, they understood each other as not even the most sympathetic longtime friends could. Their shared experience of being famous widows of men whose deeds had not yet faded from public memory, men who remained after death both exalted and condemned, united them in a way that could not be measured in years.

  Only a few months before, when Owen Wister published his dreadful, caustic biography of Ulys, Julia’s loyal friends and devoted children had staunchly supported her, but it was Mrs. Davis’s letter that had provided her the most consolation. “If I had not learned to steel myself against such attacks I never would have known an hour of peace or comfort,” she had written. “Genl. Grant’s and Mr. Davis’s records are complete, and posterity will judge for itself, even if every idle critic in the land or envious defamer should write scurrilous opinions from now until the end. In another half century when you and I are where we shall ‘see clearly’ and shall have our merited rest, the world will judge fairly, and commend justly.”

  Even so, Mrs. Davis was not content to wait until the afterlife for justice. In response to a request from The New York World, Mrs. Davis wrote an extraordinary article about Ulys titled “The Humanity of Grant.” Julia had known the essay was forthcoming, for Mrs. Davis, who had never met him, had asked Julia for anecdotes from their family life to include in the piece, but she had not expected such a striking, power
ful refutation of Mr. Wister’s worst accusations. Mrs. Davis’s thesis—which she argued convincingly—was that Ulys was a decent person as well as a great man who had refused to humiliate General Lee and the people of the South in victory, and who had regarded human life as precious. In war he had used overwhelming force not because he was a butcher, but because he believed it would bring about a quicker end to the battle, thus ultimately saving lives.

  Julia had been greatly moved by Mrs. Davis’s bold, public refutation of Mr. Wister’s book. Although she had written to express her gratitude the same day the article appeared in The World, she was determined to thank her friend in person at the earliest opportunity, which the shopping trip for Vivien fortuitously provided.

  • • •

  Mrs. Davis received her warmly at her gracious home on West Forty-fourth Street. Julia knew that many people of the South considered it an outrage and a betrayal of the highest order that the widow of President Davis had made her home among the Yankees, but the northern climate was better for her health, and, as she confided to Julia, even if it had not been, she adored New York and could not imagine living anywhere else.

  As they sat in her sunny parlor sipping tea, Julia thanked Mrs. Davis for praising Ulys in the papers. “Every word I wrote was true,” Mrs. Davis demurred, as if that made her gesture any less kind and noble.

  “Speaking of writing . . .” Julia set down her teacup. “I have a confession to make. I’ve decided to try again to publish my memoirs.”

  “Oh, Mrs. Grant, how delightful,” Mrs. Davis exclaimed, smiling. “I’m sure they’ll be a great success.”

  “Nothing to rival General Grant’s, of course,” said Julia modestly. Ulys’s memoirs had been published in December of 1885 to great acclaim and had enjoyed sales that defied all expectations. Over three hundred thousand copies had sold, earning Julia more than half a million dollars and becoming the best-selling American book in the nation’s history.

  Julia and the children had been well provided for, just as Ulys had promised. Julia had written her own life story not from pecuniary need, but for posterity.

  “That’s not a fair comparison,” Mrs. Davis protested. “No one should expect their book to match the success of General Grant’s. Nevertheless, I look forward to reading yours.”

  “I may be no more successful in finding a publisher this time than I was before.”

  “Nonsense. I’m confident that your book will be published, and then, at last, you can set the record straight.”

  Julia sipped her tea, thought for a moment, and returned the cup to its saucer. “I wouldn’t put it quite like that. Ulys wrote nothing that wasn’t true, but he left out a great deal. I don’t mean to set the record straight, but rather to fill it out.”

  Mrs. Davis nodded sagely. Julia had told her how disappointed she had been to read Ulys’s wonderful book only to discover that she had played but a very small role in it. They had been married almost thirty-seven years, and she had spent almost all of them at his side. Even when he had gone to war, she had been with him more often than not. And yet anyone reading Ulys’s memoir would be forgiven for believing that Julia had been hundreds of miles away all the while. Anyone reading Ulys’s memoir would know that he was a great man, but they would never guess that he had enjoyed a great love.

  The conversation turned to other things—their children, women’s suffrage, the astonishing changes time had wrought upon Washington and New York. Ideas and institutions that had once seemed everlasting, inviolable, had crumbled to dust, while new marvels they never could have imagined as young belles were appearing every day. The world was changing so swiftly, they agreed, that they often did not recognize the country their grandchildren would inherit.

  But some things were eternal and unchanging—love, family, faith. The blessing of friendships, old and new.

  “When the great story of our age is finally told,” Mrs. Davis said afterward as she escorted Julia outside to her carriage, “I wonder if posterity will write it as a tragedy.”

  “Not a comedy?” asked Julia, amused. “Not a grand and glorious adventure?”

  “A tall tale or a satire, perhaps, if your friend Mr. Twain writes it.”

  “He probably will,” Julia remarked. “He already has.”

  They shared a laugh, exchanged farewells, and promised to continue their correspondence. With one last wave, Julia settled into the carriage and rode back to the hotel, lost in thought.

  A tragedy, a comedy—none of those forms suited her life with Ulys, her life as Mrs. Grant.

  Theirs was a love story. It could only and always be a love story.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Mrs. Grant and Madame Jule is a work of fiction inspired by history. Many events and people appearing in the historical record have been omitted from this book for the sake of the narrative. Although the lives of Ulysses and Julia Grant are well documented, almost nothing exists about Jule beyond a few brief mentions in Julia Grant’s memoirs. Thus her life as depicted in this story is almost entirely imagined.

  I offer my sincere thanks to Denise Roy, Maria Massie, Liza Cassity, Christine Ball, Brian Tart, and the outstanding sales teams at Dutton and Plume for their ongoing support of my work and their contributions to Mrs. Grant and Madame Jule. I appreciate the generous assistance of my first readers, Marty Chiaverini, Geraldine Neidenbach, and Heather Neidenbach, whose comments and questions proved invaluable. I also thank Nic Neidenbach, Marlene and Len Chiaverini, and friends near and far for their support and encouragement.

  I am indebted to the Wisconsin Historical Society and their librarians and staff for maintaining the excellent archives I have come to rely upon in my work. The resources I consulted most often were: George Rollie Adams, General William S. Harney: Prince of Dragoons (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2001); Adam Badeau, Grant in Peace: From Appomattox to Mount McGregor. A Personal Memoir (Hartford, CT: S. S. Scranton & Co., 1887); Julia Cantacuzene, My Life Here and There (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1922); Emma Dent Casey, When Grant Went a-Courtin’: The Personal Recollections of His Courtship and Private Life (New York: Circle Publishing Company, 1909); Joan E. Cashin, First Lady of the Confederacy: Varina Davis’s Civil War (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2006); Charles Adolphe de Pineton, Marquis de Chambrun, Impressions of Lincoln and the Civil War: A Foreigner’s Account, trans. General Aldolphe de Chambrun (New York: Random House, 1952); Catherine Clinton, Mrs. Lincoln: A Life (New York: HarperCollins, 2009); Julia Dent Grant, The Personal Memoirs of Julia Dent Grant, ed. John Y. Simon (New York: G. P. Putnam, 1975); Ulysses S. Grant, Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant (New York: Charles L. Webster, 1885); Ulysses S. Grant and Jesse Grant Cramer, Letters of Ulysses S. Grant to His Father and His Youngest Sister, 1857–78 (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1912); Ulysses S. Grant and John Y. Simon, The Papers of Ulysses S. Grant (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1967); Ulysses S. Grant, E. B. Washburne, and James Grant Wilson, General Grant’s Letters to a Friend, 1861–1880 (New York: T. Y. Crowell & Co., 1897); Elizabeth Keckley, Behind the Scenes (New York: G. W. Carleton & Company, 1868); H. A. M., “The United States Through English Eyes,” Fraser’s Magazine for Town and Country, vol. 61 (February 1860); Mark Perry, Grant and Twain: The Story of a Friendship That Changed America (New York: Random House, 2004); Horace Porter, Campaigning with Grant (New York: Century Company, 1897); Ishbel Ross, The General’s Wife: The Life of Mrs. Ulysses S. Grant (New York: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1959); and Jonathan D. Sarna, When General Grant Expelled the Jews (New York: Nextbook, 2012).

  As always and most of all, I thank my husband, Marty, and my sons, Nicholas and Michael, for their enduring love and tireless support. I could not have written this book without you.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Jennifer Chiaverini is the New York Times bestselling author of Mrs. Lincoln’s Dressmaker, The Spymistress, Mrs
. Lincoln’s Rival, and the Elm Creek Quilts series. She lives with her family in Madison, Wisconsin.

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