The Wages of Fame

by Thomas Fleming

  Jeremy seized Caroline’s arm as they walked past Parton’s Hotel. In front of it in the gathering dusk was a pretty redhead in a sky-blue gown. “Do you see that woman? She’s a prostitute named Edna Kane. A favorite among Columbia students. That’s what you could become if you persist in thinking John Sladen loves you.”

  At 19 Beekman Street, they were greeted in the hall by Sally Stapleton. Her shrewd eyes took in Caroline’s tearstained face, her roiled hair, her disheveled dress. Jeremy decided the only policy was a bold-faced lie.

  “Caroline felt ill and stopped at Columbia to ask me to escort her home.”

  “What’s wrong?” Sally said, all concern.

  “I felt … dizzy—feverish,” Caroline said.

  “Let me help you upstairs,” Sally said

  In five minutes Sally returned to report Caroline was lying down. Jeremy chatted agreeably with Sally for another ten minutes. Caroline descended the stairs in a green nightrobe. She had washed her face and combed her hair.

  “I’m getting more absentminded by the hour. I found this letter to my mother I wrote yesterday and forgot to mail. Could you take care of it for me, Jeremy dear?”

  “I’ll be delighted.”

  Jeremy took the letter and Caroline retreated to her room. In five minutes he was on his way back to John Sladen’s basement. Sladen was sitting by the half window drinking rum. Music and laughter drifted down from the upper floors. The ladies of the evening were already in business.

  Jeremy gave Sladen the letter. He read it and crumpled it in his fist. “What did you do, dictate this to her? It reeks of your insufferable so-called morality.”

  Jeremy smoothed the letter on his thigh and read it.

  Dear John,

  Jeremy is right. For our mutual salvation, we must part forever. I have pledged my love to George Stapleton. It is an obligation I must fulfill if I am ever to regard myself as a woman of honor. Your conduct has convinced me we could never be truly happy together. I think it would be better for both of us if you left New York as soon as possible.

  Sincerely,

  Caroline Kemble

  Except for the word salvation, which gave too much away, Jeremy could have dictated it himself. He put the letter in his pocket. At this point, he believed John Sladen was not above blackmail.

  “I hope you’ll take that advice about leaving New York,” Jeremy said. “I’m prepared to speed you on your way.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean money. I’ll give you a hundred dollars1 to leave tomorrow.”

  “That’s a lot of money, Jeremy. Where will you get it?”

  “From George. I’ll tell him it’s a gambling debt.”

  “You must still be worried about me.”

  “I am,” Jeremy freely admitted. “I believe you’re capable of trying to lure Caroline back here or to some worse den.”

  “Did it ever occur to you that I intended to marry her?”

  “No, it never occurred to me. In my acquaintance, men who want to marry women don’t ruin them first.”

  “Ruin,” Sladen sneered. “She’s never been happier. She never will be happier. Whenever she goes to bed with that chunk of million-heir beef, she’ll think of me.”

  “You may be right. I consider that a kind of ruin. Do you want the money?”

  “Yes. I want to get as far away from New York as possible. Do you have any suggestions?”

  “New Orleans. I understand the mortality from yellow fever is high.”

  “New Orleans,” Sladen mused. “Get me the money and I’ll be on my way.”

  “A bank messenger will hand it to you at the Bowling Green steamboat dock tomorrow morning. If you attempt to communicate with Caroline in any way before you leave, the offer is void.”

  “Don’t worry, Jeremy. I won’t communicate with Sally either.”

  “You’re scum, Sladen.”

  “You’re more of the same, Jeremy. Except you’re going to be rich scum.”

  Jeremy looked around the ugly basement room, thinking how it recapitulated his friendship with John Sladen. He had persuaded George Stapleton to join him in welcoming the raw angry fugitive from the lower depths of New York to Columbia, to a future that promised him a life of gentility and some degree of wealth. It was ending here in this malodorous hole, a paradigm of the degradation he had tried to escape. Never again would Jeremy be an optimist about the United States of America.

  BOOK TWO

  ONE

  ON JUNE 3, 1828, THE wedding of Caroline Kemble and George Stapleton took place in a tent on Bowood’s green lawn. Caroline’s family—her mother and four brothers—arrived from rural Ohio wearing clothes that were largely homemade. The colors were occasionally brilliant, but the dyes used to create them were erratic, so that coats shaded from cerulean in the front to dark blue in the back, or from magenta to pink. Her mother’s dress was a relic of the 1790s, spotted here and there with mildew stains. Caroline’s grandmother Kate Stapleton Rawdon was unfortunately too ill to come.

  Angelica Stapleton and her sister, Henrietta Van Rensselaer, arrived in an elegant coach drawn by four white Arabian horses. Their Paris gowns, their diamond and pearl necklaces, their carefully coiffed hair, made one of Caroline’s brothers exclaim, “You look like actresses!” Since actresses were considered only a step above prostitutes in 1828, the New York ladies did not take this honest farmer’s opinion as a compliment.

  The governor of New Jersey, the chief justice of the state supreme court, and most of the state legislature were also in attendance, as well as the state’s two U.S. senators and five congressmen. Colonel John Stevens sailed up the Hackensack River in one of his steamboats and finished the journey to Bowood in a Stapleton coach. The Honorable John Quincy Adams, the president of the United States, with whom Hugh Stapleton had served in the U.S. Senate, sent his compliments and best wishes.

  The bride was more than worthy of this distinguished company. She wore a gown of the purest white damask, with bands of inlaid mother-of-pearl and lace. In her jet-black hair she wore a single white rose. In her arms she carried a bouquet of lilies. The Congressman escorted her up the aisle, a gesture that advertised his approval of the match—something that was probably not far from his canny brain.

  George’s cousin Sally was Caroline’s only attendant. It was a proof, if any were needed, that the new Mrs. Stapleton had little interest in or capacity for friendship with other women. Not a single fellow student at Miss Carter’s school nor a young woman from the circle of couples with whom she had partied in Manhattan had become close enough to win inclusion in the ceremony.

  Jeremy Biddle had to listen patiently to Sally Stapleton’s biting observations on this point. He would have been glad to see Caroline at the altar, without Sally, without the Congressman, in a dress of tatterdemalion. Caroline’s attendance was the only thing he cared about. Until the last moment, he was unsure if the subterranean powers that had seized her soul might not hurl her onto a steamboat to New Orleans.

  John Sladen had departed for that distant port on schedule, Jeremy’s hundred dollars in his pocket. But Caroline displayed no gratitude toward Jeremy for her peremptory rescue. On the contrary, whenever she saw him, loathing flashed across her face. She seemed barely capable of controlling her detestation. But she went steadfastly ahead with plans for the wedding, and Jeremy began to think the source of her emotion was simply his knowledge of her infidelity. If that was the case, Jeremy told himself, he would gladly bear her dislike lifelong for George Stapleton’s sake.

  At the wedding banquet in Bowood’s ballroom, George whirled Caroline around the floor to the music of a Viennese waltz and stopped at the family table. “Jeremy,” he said, “I give you the honor of the second dance with the queen.”

  “Careful George,” Jeremy said, “you’re not sounding like an American politician.”

  “An American can have a queen—of his heart,” George said.

  “I think the Congressman deserve
s the next dance far more than Jeremy,” Caroline said. “He’s the king of my heart.”

  “I told you I was going to sue for alienation of affection, Grandfather!” George said.

  “By tomorrow morning she’ll have changed her tune, George,” the Congressman said, bringing shocked expressions to the faces of Angelica Stapleton and her sister, Henrietta Van Rensselaer. Their straitlaced generation had banished eighteenth-century ribaldry from New York’s drawing rooms.

  Hugh Stapleton circled the floor with Caroline and returned to the table declaring his ancient legs had better be replaced by younger ones. This time Caroline could find no plausible excuse to avoid Jeremy. She kept him at a rigid distance as they moved out on the dance floor.

  “I wish we could become friends again,” Jeremy said. “You have nothing to fear from me.”

  “I’m glad to hear that.” Caroline’s face remained frozen.

  “I hope you’ve heard nothing from a certain pseudogentleman.”

  “If I had, you’d be the last person I’d tell.”

  “Who’d be the first?”

  “No one. I’ve put him out of my mind—and heart. I hope you’ll allow me to do the same thing with you.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You won’t be welcome in my house. I may be forced to invite you occasionally, if you marry Sally. But you’ll never be welcome. If you persist in coming, I’ll ruin your friendship with George.”

  “I don’t understand you. Why do you despise me?”

  “Because of the way you’ve wormed and wound your way into George’s confidence. That pseudogentleman of our mutual acquaintance was right when he called you the ultimate toady.”

  Jeremy writhed on the shaft of that brutal thrust. He was among the first victims of the dilemma of riches in democratic America. He liked—yes, even loved—George Stapleton as the friend of his boyhood and young manhood. It was years before he thought of George as rich. But others found it hard, if not impossible, to imagine the friend of a rich man as anything but a sycophant in pursuit of a share of his wealth.

  “George is going to become a very powerful man. Possibly the president of the United States. I don’t intend to let anyone influence him but me,” Caroline Kemble Stapleton said.

  There it was—the gauntlet that Caroline had flung down and dared Jeremy to pick up. He was tempted to tell her he had no desire to influence George Stapleton. But he realized that would have been a lie. His years as a third had made him all too aware that George needed hardheaded advice.

  Jeremy spoke more out of the pain of that word toady than any vision of the future: “Let me reassure you that there’s no need to worry about me intruding on your household. Whether Sally accepts my hand or not, I intend to return to Philadelphia and make my own way there, with no help from anyone.”

  “Good,” Caroline replied. “That will remove both of you from contention.”

  Jeremy returned Caroline to George, feeling dazed by the raw intensity of that exchange. He invited Sally Stapleton to dance, and before they had circled the floor, he heard himself asking her to marry him. She gave him a wary look. “Is this Caroline’s idea?”

  “Good God, no,” he said. “I’m sure she’d rather see me marry almost anyone but you.”

  “You seemed to be having a rather tense conversation just now.”

  “It was a bit unpleasant. She told me I wouldn’t be welcome in her house. She considers me the ultimate toady. Whereas I consider myself George’s ultimate friend.”

  There were tears on Jeremy’s cheeks. “Sally, I wish—I I need—your love more than ever now,” he babbled.

  “You have it, Jeremy. You’ve had it for six months,” Sally said in her calm, direct way. “Why do you doubt it?”

  “That conversation with Caroline makes me doubt almost everything about myself.”

  “I despise that woman. Now you’ve given me a reason to hate her.”

  Jeremy was too overwrought to consider the possibility that he had laid the groundwork for a ruinous family feud. “I want to live in Philadelphia. Far away from Caroline, Aunt Angelica, and Aunt Henrietta, among others. Will that trouble you?”

  “Not in the least.”

  “I love you more and more and more,” Jeremy said, pressing her against him until he glimpsed Aunt Henrietta watching them, disapproval all over her fat frowning face.

  The wedding breakfast ended around 2 P.M. But that by no means closed the festivities for the day. Caroline, George, his uncle Malcolm Stapleton, and the Congressman rode into the city of Hamilton in the family coach to join a huge party at Principia Mills. The looms and shuttles had been shut down and everyone had the afternoon off. The mostly women employees had been urged to invite boyfriends and brothers from the city and countryside to enjoy the fun. There was dancing on the open plaza before the main buildings to music from a band of local fiddlers. Dozens of pounds of cracked crabs and oysters and lobsters were spread out for all to enjoy. A well-spiked punch flowed freely.

  At the end of the afternoon, the Congressman mounted a table and introduced George and Caroline to the merry crowd. “Someday he’ll be your boss,” he said. “I thought you’d want to meet him—and his boss.”

  That drew a laugh, and the Congressman, perhaps realizing the jest might be almost too close to the truth, added he was only joking. “There’s something else George wants to tell you.”

  He turned to George, who stepped forward on cue. “I’m no speechmaker,” he said, “but I’ve come back here to New Jersey with a desire to do something for the people of my favorite state. I want to represent you in Congress at this difficult moment in our history. It’s time to give people my age a voice in Washington—to bring Young America’s ideas to the fore. I want to keep the country growing and producing for all Americans, and I’ll make sure New Jersey gets its rightful share of the federal government’s attention. Our industries will be protected and our canals and toll roads well funded—I I guarantee it!”

  The crowd’s applause was polite—no more. Although George did not mention the National Republicans, no one had any doubt that he would vote with them if he was elected.

  Caroline kissed George on the cheek and whispered, “That was wonderful.” The Congressman had written the speech. Caroline had made George rehearse it a dozen times in the last two days. She had left no doubt that a good performance was as important to her as the vows they would exchange at the altar.

  George barely managed to muster a smile in return for her kiss. He was less than happy with kicking off his election campaign at his wedding. It had been his uncle Malcolm’s idea. George had wanted to take Caroline directly from Bowood to a ship for a three-month grand tour of Europe. Uncle Malcolm and the Congressman, assessing reports from their political operatives around the state, had decided George had better stay home and campaign hard. The Democrats were looking more and more formidable.

  Almost as if someone wanted to prove the wisdom of this advice, as George was helping Caroline down from the table, a voice in the crowd yelled, “Three cheers for Andrew Jackson.”

  “Hip hip hooray!” roared the crowd. “Hip hip hooray. Hip hip hooray!”

  The Congressman, still up on the table, forced a Smile at this outburst of Democratic defiance. “We all admire General Jackson,” he said. “It’s President Jackson that worries me.”

  The bride and groom spent their first night together at Bowood. If George noticed Caroline was not a prima facie virgin, he said nothing about it. He was sophisticated enough to know that lack of the most obvious proof meant nothing. She made sure her demeanor was virginal—not a difficult task. A half dozen visits to John Sladen’s bed hardly made her a courtesan.

  Caroline found George’s ardor more than matched his huge physique. She wanted to make him happy and she vowed in her willful way that she would make herself happy too. She put all comparisons with John Sladen out of her mind. He was gone into the darkness of distance. The underground river was mere poet
ry. Never again would she let her imagination distract her. She wrapped her arms around George Stapleton and kissed him with wild fervor.

  After the consummation, Caroline lay in George’s arms and confided to him her plan for the future. He would go to Congress and make a name for himself, with her help. Even if Andrew Jackson was elected, he was already an old man. What lay beyond his presidential term was an unknown world that they would explore—and master—together.

  “You’re the only world I want to explore,” George said, kissing her white throat.

  “You can do both, George.”

  “What if I’m no good at politics? Will you still love me?”

  “You will be good at politics, George. I’m absolutely sure of it.”

  The next morning at breakfast the Congressman’s eyes were full of more good-natured ribaldry. Before he could say a word, Caroline greeted him with a kiss and a sigh. “Your reign as king of my heart is over,” she said.

  “So soon? I thought I might linger for a week or two …”

  She shook her head and kissed George coquettishly on the cheek. “It only took a single night.”

  George looked uncomfortable. Jeremy Biddle detected a certain theatricality in Caroline’s performance. But he was a realist. He did not expect her to abandon her feelings for John Sladen overnight. He still believed that George’s love would eventually prevail.

  For their honeymoon, Caroline chose a trip to Washington, D.C. The newlyweds rode to Hackensack with bluff, hearty Colonel John Stevens, whose steamboat carried them down the Hackensack River to the Hudson, where they boarded a larger steamboat for Baltimore. From there it was only five hours by carriage over a good road to the national capital. In two days they were ensconced at the Franklin House, a large, comfortable establishment on I Street, run by an Irishman named O’Neale and his vivacious, dark-haired daughter, Peggy, who seemed on bantering terms with every patron.