by Gore Vidal
“That is a fine gesture.” At this point Breckinridge saw fit to withdraw as temporal power and ephemeral press met in not-atypical agon. “Mr. Chase will be gratified, I know.”
“Mr. Bennett is more and more Your Excellency’s admirer …” Wikoff began.
“Then I admire the tactful way that he keeps this admiration out of his paper.”
“I think that will change. You know he has a son, James Gordon Bennett, Junior, a young man dedicated to you and to the Union. He would like to fight.”
“I shall not stop him, Mr. Wikoff. That is a promise.”
“He would like to fight as a lieutenant in the navy, Mr. Lincoln.”
Although Washburne had spent his entire career as a politician in making trades of this sort, he was somewhat taken aback by the boldness of His Satanic Majesty’s ambassador. One yacht for one commission as a naval lieutenant was hardly exorbitant. But that was not the point. Yacht and commission cancelled each other out, and Bennett would still be in no way committed to support the Administration. Plainly, Lincoln was going to lose this round, too.
The President nodded. “Tell him to send the young man to me. And to send the yacht to Mr. Chase. But not the other way round. Now I must return to my labors.” Lincoln patted Washburne’s arm and crossed the room to the door, followed by Wikoff.
As Lincoln shook hands with Breckinridge, Washburne stared idly at the folder under Lincoln’s arm. Then Washburne, as idly, looked at Wikoff, who was again in attendance upon Mrs. Lincoln. Then, not so idly, Washburne wondered why Wikoff should have taken from the console Lincoln’s only copy of the Message to Congress, whose contents no one but Lincoln and his secretaries knew.
TWENTY
FOR ONCE David Herold preferred the dark back room of the drugstore to the lively and gregarious front room. Today the heat was peculiarly unbearable—more like August than July. Although David sweated quite as much in the windowless room, he was at least spared the sight of the bronze-bright sun that made Lafayette Square’s greenery shimmer like the surface of a pond after a frog’s sudden leap. All morning, in his shirt-sleeves, he’d been thinking of cool ponds, frogs, swift rivers, fish, dark woods, as he prepared prescriptions, his tie loosened and collar opened and shirt stuck with sweat to his back.
Mr. Thompson’s call: “David!” was not welcome. But he mopped his face with a towel, and joined his employer in the shop. The fierce light from the windows brought tears to his eyes. He wondered if there was any water left in him. He wanted, desperately, a glass of beer. Mysteriously, Mr. Thompson did not sweat, ever. He held in his waters. On the hottest of days—and this was one—the pale face slightly pinkened; and that was it. Mr. Thompson wore his linen coat, coolly. “David, take this”—he gave David a package—“to Mrs. Greenhow’s.”
“Just down the road?” David was annoyed at being called from his dark lair in order to make a delivery a block away on Sixteenth Street. “Where’s her giri?”
“I don’t know where her girl is, and I don’t care where her girl is.” Thus did the heat get to the usually equable and always dry Mr. Thompson. “But I got the message for you to deliver this quinine right away. She’s got the ague.”
Without a word, still in shirt-sleeves, David took the package; and stepped out into the blaze of noon. The street was empty of people; the horsecars seemed not to be running at all. Later, of course, troops would be on the move again. Every day they came down the avenue from the depot. Thousands and thousands of young men in ill-fitting blue uniforms that looked to be uncommonly hot for Southern weather; and any day now the long-awaited “March on Richmond” would begin. Mr. Surratt did not think that the Yankees would get very far; not that he himself got very far anymore. In fact, it was now plain to everyone that the only trip that he would ever take again would be to leave the world altogether. He no longer crossed the Long Bridge. Occasionally, he would send David on errands. But none had been of any great interest; to David at least.
Mrs. Greenhow lived across from St. John’s Church; and close to the house of the Secretary of State, who had been seen, on occasion, entering or leaving her chaste widow’s house.
Rose Greenhow was a dark, good-looking Southern woman in her forties; well-connected in the highest circles of old Washington. She was a great-niece of Dolley Madison; she was the aunt of Mrs. Stephen Douglas. Although Mrs. Greenhow was supposed to be in a state of mourning for a daughter who had recently died, she still received occasional visitors, among them Governor Seward, who was suspected, by those who gathered at Thompson’s, of conducting an affair with her. She had also been close to President Buchanan and his niece, as well as to the Jefferson Davises. Of Washington’s numerous secessionist ladies, she was the only one to make an effort to get on with the Lincoln Administration and to receive, in her house, Republican potentates.
To David’s surprise, Mrs. Greenhow’s maid opened the door. Suddenly angry, he shoved the parcel into the black woman’s hands. “Here,” he said. “From Thompson’s. I’ve got to go.”
“Come in,” said a soft but clear voice from the front parlor. “Please.”
David entered the parlor where Mrs. Greenhow lay on a sofa. The high-ceilinged room was cool because the sunlight was diffused by shutters, while red gauze hung between the front and back parlors, making rosy the room’s light; not to mention its occupant—Rose. A large rosewood piano stood against one wall, and a smell of roses was in the air, making David more than ever aware of his own sweatiness in the presence of this slender dark cool woman, who motioned for him to sit in a chair beside her sofa: like a doctor with a patient, he thought.
“You’ll want some lemonade,” she said, plainly aware of all the water that he had lost—and was losing. “Theresa! Lemonade.” She raised her voice slightly; then lowered it.
“I have to go, ma’am,” he said, not moving.
“Stay a moment. I’m sorry to get you out on such a day. But I wanted to meet you.”
David could not believe his ears. Why would this grand lady want to meet a prescription clerk with, admittedly, a fine new moustache but nothing else to recommend him? Visions of the Navy Yard widow came and, somewhat guiltily, went. If Mrs. Greenhow wanted youthful masculine company, there were thousands of well-born Federal officers in the city, eager to oblige. David was so engrossed in the contemplation of his hostess’s motives that he neglected to respond, verbally, to her surprising statement. He simply stared at her, noticing the fullness of her bosom beneath the white lace, a material so delicate that he thought that he could glimpse … David was aware that he was both staring and blushing at the same time, while the silence in the room made a roar in his ears.
But Mrs. Greenhow took no notice of his embarrassment. “I wanted to meet you,” she repeated, “because Mr. Surratt spoke so highly of you and as you work practically next door to me, why, I thought to myself, we must be friends, you and I, in these difficult times.” Mrs. Greenhow smiled at him. Forty years old if she were a day, she still had a youthful air. There were no lines in that camellia-white skin. He would not, he decided, even want a ham.
With an effort, David controlled himself. “I never knew you knew Mr. Surratt,” David’s voice broke like a young boy’s midway through the sentence. He felt a fool. Noisily, he cleared his throat; sat up straight. “But I’ve always heard that you were one of us, even though you see all those Yankees.”
Mrs. Greenhow laughed. “Oh, I see everyone nowadays. After all, most of my friends have gone South. So if I didn’t see my Yankee … friends … I’d see no one at all. Of course, I’m still in part-mourning for my daughter. So I don’t really see much of anyone except old friends like Mr. Seward …”
David nodded. “I’ve seen him come here.”
“You are sharp-eyed.” The black woman brought them lemonade. Mrs. Greenhow discussed the weather until they were again alone.
“Mr. Herold, I think you can help me.”
“You, Mrs. Greenhow?” David finished the glass
of lemonade in one long inelegant swallow.
“Not really me, Mr. Herold. The Confederacy. I supply Richmond with information that I get, from time to time, from my Yankee friends.”
David was awed. “They give you the information?”
Mrs. Greenhow nodded. “Without knowing it, of course, they will, every now and then, let slip something of use to us. Then, sometimes, cases that have been placed in my cloakroom are … examined while I pour tea. For instance, I have—or had—a map showing General McDowell’s line of march. I also know the day and the hour that he will cross over into Virginia.”
David was entirely thrilled. “How do you get all this over to the other side?”
“The map is already in the hands of General Beauregard. But that particular courier …” Mrs. Greenhow paused; and sipped her lemonade.
“You want me to go to General Beauregard?” This was the moment that David had been dreaming of. He would ride at dead of night through the owl-haunted woods of Virginia. He would … But he would not. Mrs. Greenhow had other uses for him.
“This is too important, I’m afraid, to leave to someone I trust but do not really know.”
“I’ve crossed the Long Bridge, ma’am, a dozen times for Mr. Surratt. I’ve also got a military pass and …”
“Perhaps another time. I have a courier ready. By the way, you should know that I am constantly watched.”
“You? A friend of Mr. Seward and Senator Wilson and …”
“That’s why I’m watched. Because all those people still come to me. My sympathies are well-known. But my activities are not. I hope. There is a Mr. Pinkerton—from Chicago. He is something called a detective and the War Department has given him a number of agents who keep an eye on dangerous ladies like me. So I must be careful whom I see and where I go. Fortunately, the prescription clerk from Thompson’s can always come here to make a delivery. He can always serve our country, unsuspected.”
“That’s just what Mr. Surratt said when I told him I was fixing to go South and join up with the Confederate Army.” There were times when David enjoyed an out-and-out lie.
“Obviously, that’s what any brave young man would want to do. But what you can do for us now is far more valuable. Believe me.” Mrs. Greenhow plunged her long white hand into her décolletage, and withdrew a scrap of paper no larger than a sugar cube. She gave the paper to David, who did not know whether or not he should read it; and so read it. There were six meaningless words.
“It is code,” said Mrs. Greenhow. “My late husband enjoyed inventing codes. In fact, he was a translator for the State Department. I learned from him. You are to give this to a certain young lady in Georgetown.” Mrs. Greenhow got up from her sofa and crossed to a secretaire, where she wrote a few words on a slip of paper. “Say that you come from me. She’ll be expecting you. She’ll know what to do.” Mrs. Greenhow was now standing so close to David that he could smell her rose-water scent; he hoped that she could not smell him. “This is her name and address. She is staying in a house not far from Chain Bridge. She’ll expect you at six-thirty this evening.”
As David took the paper, he noted that he was the same height as Mrs. Greenhow. Restored by lemonade to his normal component of liquidity, he felt desire. He could tell that Mrs. Greenhow felt it, too. She gave him a luminous smile, like that of the Madonna on the wall of the Surratt front parlor; then she took his hand in her silk-smooth cool one; and led him to the front door, where she whispered, “Once the young lady has the message safely, pass by this house at noon tomorrow. I’ll be at the window. That way I’ll know.”
“I can’t come in?” David was plaintive.
“We must not see each other too often. Unless,” she smiled, “there is a crisis … in my health or that of my daughter, Little Rose, and then we shall need all sorts of medicine.” She pressed his hand; but before he could press back, she had, somehow, got him out the front door.
The heat made him gasp. The glare made him shut his eyes. Glowworms writhed behind the lids. Then he opened his eyes; looked about to see if a detective was on duty. But there was no one in sight except the inevitable cavalryman, astride his horse in the shade of St. John’s. Because of the constant troop movements, a cavalryman stood guard at every street corner in the city, regulating traffic, forcing carriages to pull to one side if troops were passing by. An armed camp, thought David, as he strolled back to Fifteenth Street. An armed camp secretly filled with an invisible enemy like the fashionable Mrs. Greenhow—like himself. This was a real war, and they were real spies. Oh, this was life, real life.
THIS WAS indeed war, thought Chase, as the carriage containing him and Kate pulled up to the main portico of Arlington House, from which General McDowell commanded the Army of the Potomac, an army that could be seen encamped all about them on what once had been the lawns and gardens of General Washington’s family and now was—or had been until a few months ago—the manor house of Robert E. Lee.
“It is cool,” said Kate, “or cooler, at least.” She held her parasol high as she got out of the carriage, assisted by the general’s aide.
An old milky-eyed Negro greeted them. “I was here when General Washington used to come to see his kin the Eustises. I was a Eustis boy for sixty years.” The thin voice had said these same words so many times to so many visitors that all meaning had gone out of them for him. But he had most of his teeth; and spoke distinctly. “I saw the general many times. He called me Josephus, my name.” The old man stopped, abruptly; then he grinned and bowed and held out his hand.
“A coin will do,” the aide said. “He’s quite deaf,” he added. Chase gave the man a coin. Then they climbed the steps of the portico, where they paused and looked southeast toward the Capitol on its hill, the unsightly crane poking skyward from that circular emptiness where a dome was meant to be. The city seemed to dance in the heat waves.
“The general’s still at dinner. Will you join him?” He wasn’t sure when you’d be here, so he began.”
“That’s quite all right, Captain …?”
“Sanford, sir.”
“My daughter, Miss Chase.”
Sanford gazed at Kate with awe; or what Chase took to be awe. The latest set of spectacles from Franklin’s had a habit of erasing the center of his vision while making too vivid the periphery. All in all, he preferred his constant myopia, which was not unlike trying to see underwater, where everything was cloudy and imprecise until he was within a few feet of it; then all the details were clear. He knew that much of his reputation for aloofness was because he could not, simply, see.
But Chase could now make out the command-center of the Army of the Potomac, which was four tents pitched next to the Mansion. Aides hurried from tent to tent, carrying dispatches. Troops drilled on lower terraces. Horses were being shod at a nearby smithy. The commanding general was seated alone at a long trestle table, eating an entire watermelon.
As the Chases approached, General McDowell rose. Wiped his lips. Bowed to Kate; and greeted her in French. Bowed to Chase, and said, “You must dine with me. We keep ungodly hours, as you can see …”
The Chases had already dined but each agreed to a slice from a second watermelon, which was being held in reserve. Chase had not thought it possible for a man to eat an entire watermelon after, presumably, a large dinner. As they sat at the table in the shade of a huge oak tree, the general ate, received aides, gave orders and entertained his guests.
Chase stared at the green-blue below him where men were drilling; to his eyes the effect was not unlike that of a shoal of minnows in a muddy stream. “Your men look fit,” he hazarded.
“Oh, they’re fit enough. But, though they are fit enough,” McDowell dextrously flicked with right forefinger melon seeds to the grass at his feet, “to be men, they are not fit to be soldiers. I just saw that correspondent from the London Times, what’s his name? The famous one?”
“Mr. Russell,” said Kate. “What do you think of him?”
“It’s what he
thinks of me that matters.” McDowell signed an order that Captain Sanford had placed before him. “He’s been present at all the great battles of the last dozen years. He makes me nervous, looking over my shoulder. Do you realize, Miss Chase, that I am the first American officer ever to command, in the field, an army of thirty thousand?”
“But, surely, three thousand or thirty thousand …” Chase began.
“It is not the same,” said McDowell gloomily. “Our so-called Mexican War was a very small affair. A kind of Indian skirmish. That’s why my senior officers have had no experience in the modern field. Nor have I. Your regiments can’t even perform a brigade evolution together.” McDowell mimicked Russell so expertly that Kate laughed aloud; and Chase smiled, despite his growing panic: Could the Union army fail? The thought had never seriously occurred to him. But if the Union army were to fail, he would never be able to sell his five-twenty bonds at par.
“Well, sir, Mr. Russell’s right. The men are nowhere near ready. Oh, yes, the President tells me that the rebels are green, too. But they are on their home ground. It is we who must attack them. They can fight us like Indians, and do very well. We must fight them as if this was the Crimea—a modern war. Worse,” as McDowell lowered his voice, Chase and Kate leaned forward to hear him whisper, “I have no accurate map of Virginia.”
Chase said nothing. Kate opened her parasol; then shut it again. There was a long moment as the three studied the remains of McDowell’s watermelon. Finally, Chase said, “You seemed confident when you presented your plan to us the other day.”
“Oh, Mr. Chase, it was not my plan. I looked to the details, of course. I take full responsibility. I am the commanding general. But I’ve always agreed with General Scott that we should wait until the autumn.”
