Lincoln

by Gore Vidal

  “It’s the fever.” Mary frowned. “I don’t wonder. This house is so cold. I think they are better, sir. Oh, I wish I could call off this reception!” Mary did indeed regret the inexorable nature of her first reception in the entirely refurnished and repaired Executive Mansion. Tonight was intended to be her justification to the world for the money that she had spent. Certainly, never in the history of the Mansion had the state rooms been so gloriously decorated. She had seen to that. She had also made an innovation which had, by and large, been much praised: instead of opening the rooms to anyone who chose to come look at the President, she had invited five hundred of the most brilliant personages in the land. She had also eschewed the services of Washington’s ubiquitous Gautier and sent for New York’s finest chef and caterer, M. Maillard. But now both boys were ill; and the Chevalier Wikoff was locked up in the basement of the Old Capitol prison; and she needed money.

  As always, Watt was understanding. “In President Buchanan’s time, we often used the stationery fund for … other uses.”

  “I know.” Mary was hard. “I have asked Mr. Hay for some of it. He has said, no.” Hardly a day passed now without some sort of scene between Mary and one or the other of the President’s secretaries. Stoddard tried to be helpful but he was no match for Nicolay and Hay.

  “It’s always Mr. Hay, isn’t it, ma’am?” Watt looked grim, and chewed the ends of his moustache. “He’s in league with Major French—against us.”

  Mary did not entirely appreciate the “us.” But it was certainly true that her only ally in the Mansion was Watt. Periodically, efforts were made to get rid of him as well as of his wife, a stewardess on the Mansion’s payroll. So far, Mary had been able to rout their common enemies. Now Watt wanted to counterattack. “After all, why should you allow a mere boy to tell you what you may or may not do with White House funds? Funds which are almost never used for what they’re supposed to be used for because of the way the times change while the wording of the old appropriations don’t.”

  “I’ve always thought Mr. Hay was stealing the funds for the horses’ feed.” Although, it was Watt who had put the idea in Mary’s mind, she had since made it her own. “I know that he was supposed to pay the supplier directly, but never did. I shall bring charges!”

  “I wouldn’t do that, ma’am.” Watt was cautious. “Not yet, anyway; we must give him a bit more rope.” Watt stood up. “One way to get some money quick and easy is to sack one of the stewards and then you yourself can collect his salary which will keep on coming every month.”

  Mary was astonished at the simplicity of this plan. “I can do that?”

  “Miss Harriett Lane did it all the time when she was mistress here.”

  Mary saw the vista beginning to brighten. “I shall see to that, Mr. Watt. Thank you, sir.” Mary drew a letter from her reticule. “You remember Mr. Waterman, whom we met in New York City last fall?”

  Watt nodded. “A very rich man, they say. And most loyal to you and the President.”

  “See that this gets to him.” Mary gave Watt the letter. “I don’t want it sent from the White House.”

  “I’ll get it to him by courier, ma’am.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Watt.” Mary smiled. It was good to have one friend at least. But Watt had something on his mind. “I’ve been to Old Capitol prison,” he said.

  “How is he?”

  “They’ve practically got him in chains. He’s in a sort of closet …”

  “This is all Mr. Seward’s doing! God, that man is vile!”

  “Yes, ma’am, he is. Five days from now, Mr. Wikoff will go back before the House Judiciary Committee. They will ask him how he got a copy of the President’s message.”

  Mary began, faintly, to see a corona of flame around Watt’s head. Could this be The Headache? “He will not answer them, will he?”

  “I don’t know, Mrs. Lincoln. But I think that you should speak to the President.”

  The flames flared like the sun during an eclipse. “I cannot, sir.”

  But Seward could speak to Lincoln; and did. Lincoln listened carefully, feet on the writing desk, a handkerchief in his left hand which he used to rub ink from the fingers of his right hand. He had spent the morning signing military commissions, an endless task made even more disagreeable by a singularly oily paper that resisted ink.

  Seward paced the office, as if it were his own. “Anyway, Dan managed to get the Committee so enraged that they’re now threatening to bring charges against him, for contempt of Congress, and throw him into the Old Capitol, too.”

  “It would appear that General Sickles was not the best of all possible defense attorneys.” Lincoln stared, thoughtfully, at Seward. “Why did you pick him?”

  “Mr. Wikoff chose him.” Seward was prompt. “But I trust Dan. He’s loyal. He’s clever. He’s popular in Congress …”

  “So popular that they are about to lock him up? And just think what that will do to us! A brigadier-general, a former congressman, arrested!” Lincoln threw down his handkerchief. “When does Wikoff testify?”

  “February tenth.”

  “What will he say?”

  “What he has already said, that he is sworn to secrecy.”

  Lincoln sighed. “That will not do, Mr. Seward. That will not do at all.”

  “Then should he name someone?”

  Lincoln nodded. “I think he will have to, unless we can arrange something with the Committee, to get them to drop the matter.”

  Seward felt the slight voluptuous tingle that always preceded, nowadays, any exercise of inherent powers. “I believe you could, simply, order them to drop the investigation; and they would have to comply.”

  “I suppose I could. But then we’d never hear the end of it. No, we must find a way to approach the chairman of the Committee.”

  Seward and Lincoln discussed in considerable and unflattering detail the character of one John Hickman, a Pennsylvania politician who had left the Democratic Party to become not only a fierce abolitionist Republican but the sworn enemy of all moderates, beginning with the President. It was agreed that Seward would try to involve Thaddeus Stevens in the affair. Meanwhile, every effort must be made to get from Wikoff the truth. “Because,” Lincoln said, “he plainly stole the message. Now since that is a crime, he pretends that he was given it, which is not a crime. But by his silence, he indicates that the giver of the message was Mrs. Lincoln, which makes her the criminal. But she did not give it to him. I am certain of that. So either he will have to confess to theft—and I to carelessness—or he must tell us who it was that really gave him the message.”

  Seward said, “I think I have an idea.”

  “Good. But don’t tell it to me. I’m not made for secrets.”

  Seward smiled. Actually, he had never known a man so secretive as Lincoln when it came to keeping to himself the direction that he planned to take in some great enterprise. On the other hand, Lincoln tended to be quite free with the secrets of others. Seward paused at the door. “How are the boys?”

  “The fever lingers. Willie is particularly weak. I hate the winter here,” he added, as if that somehow explained the darkness of the times.

  Seward said good-bye, and left through the door into the Cabinet Room, avoiding the usual mass of supplicants. He was reasonably certain that Mrs. Lincoln was the guilty party. He was also certain that there was an interesting way out of the imbroglio, one in which a number of birds might crash to earth as the result of a single flung stone.

  MARY HAD CEASED to think of Wikoff. She trusted Watt’s ingenuity. More to the point, the whole world had now been concentrated into a single pier glass, in which she was at last able to see the result of her two hours’ labor with Keckley. The mirror reflected a white satin gown, trimmed with black Chantilly lace. There was a yard-long train. Shoulders and arms were bare, in imitation of the French empress; and, wonder of wonders, she did not for once look to herself to possess any more than a mere sufficiency of flesh. A white-and-black
wreath of crepe myrtle crowned her head. She was unmistakably the Republican Queen.

  “It is beautiful,” said Keckley, a shadow in the mirror behind her that was now joined by a taller, thinner shadow.

  “Well, our cat has a long tail tonight.” Mary turned, smiling, to greet her husband, still in his shirt-sleeves. Lincoln picked up the long train; and whistled.

  “Father, it is the latest style.”

  Lincoln stared at her low-cut dress and shook his head. “I’d be happier if more of the tail was up there at the neck, and less on the floor.”

  “I don’t advise you about generals.”

  “Every day you do …”

  “Well, then, if I do, you never listen to me; so I’ll not listen to you.”

  “I suppose that is a fair trade.” Lincoln let the train drop. “I told the musicians there’d be no dancing.”

  Mary nodded. “I think Willie is better. I was just with him. Tad is cold, he says.”

  “What does the doctor say?” Lincoln proceeded to pull on his coat, with Keckley’s aid.

  “All is well, he says. But this ague is a new one, he says, not like the others. I wish,” said Mary, staring at her reflection as if it were that of someone else, “there was some way of cancelling all of this, so that I can look after the boys.”

  “I’m here, Mrs. Lincoln.” Keckley held open the door. “I’ll be with them the whole night. So you go down there, and show those secesh ladies the flag, which is just what you are—and Mr. Lincoln, too.”

  “No, Mrs. Lincoln is the flag. I’m just the flagpole.” Lincoln indicated Mary’s dress. “By the way, why is the flag black and white tonight?”

  “Mr. Seward says we should be in half mourning for Prince Albert. That’s how it’s done, among us sovereigns.”

  Lincoln laughed. “Well, I reckon we are sort of temporary ramshackle sovereigns at that.”

  “Speak for yourself, Father. Ramshackle!” Keckley fastened Mary’s pearl necklace at the back. Then Mary turned, sweeping her train with her left hand while with her right she took her husband’s arm. “I think it’s time, Father.”

  There was a fanfare from the Marine Band as they appeared at the head of the stairs. Then they descended to the strains of “Hail to the Chief.”

  The East Room was as splendid as Mary had dreamed that it would be. Beneath the gaslit crystal chandeliers, the diplomatic corps were lined up to the right of the entrance, gold and silver braid glittering, while, to the left, were the military and the politicians and the crinolined ladies in all their jewels. Mary’s sharp eye noticed that Mrs. Crittenden was laden with diamonds like an Eastern idol, while Miss Chase wore mode-colored silk and no jewels at all.

  As the President and Mrs. Lincoln made their stately circuit of the room, many of the ladies curtseyed at their appearance; and all the diplomats bowed low. We are sovereigns, thought Mary contentedly; and not so ramshackle as all that.

  In the center of the room, they stopped. To the President’s left stood a military aide and the chief of protocol from the State Department, ready to announce each of the guests. For once, Mary knew them all; or at least their names. The French princes were the first to pay their respects; then the diplomatic corps, according to seniority, filed past.

  Suddenly, a slender young man with a moustache shook the President’s hand and said, “Mr. President, I wonder if you remember me? I’m your son, Robert.”

  Lincoln blinked his eyes; gave a slow smile; lifted his left gloved hand and gave the boy a slight cuff on the cheek. “That’s enough of that,” he said. From the next room, the Marine Band played a polka, to which no one could dance that night.

  Robert bowed to Mary, who gave him a low curtsey. She noted how he had entirely grown up in the year that he had been at Harvard. He was self-contained, strong-willed and somewhat shy; more Todd than Lincoln. He wanted to join the army. Although she had, thus far, successfully forbidden it, she lived in terror that one day Lincoln would let the boy do what he wanted. Lately, the newspapers had begun to speculate on the eventual military status of the Prince of Rails. It was Mary’s prayer that the war would end before Robert had graduated from Harvard.

  At eleven-thirty, as the party moved into the entrance hall, two stewards came forward to fling open the doors of the state dining room in order to reveal Maillard’s masterpieces of the confectionary art. Unfortunately, the doors were locked; and the key was missing.

  Mary found herself standing at the locked doors between the President and General McClellan. “Madam President, we seem delayed,” said McClellan, plainly enjoying the mismanagement.

  “Oh, but we shall advance, sir, soon enough.” Mary smiled at the Young Napoleon. “We always like to set the example,” she added.

  From behind them, a voice cried out the words of a recent newspaper editorial, “ ‘An advance to the front is only retarded by the imbecility of commanders!’ ” There was a good deal of laughter, and the Young Napoleon carefully joined in. Lincoln looked down at McClellan and said, “I hope, General, they don’t mean the Commander-in-Chief.”

  “They don’t know what they mean, Your Excellency.”

  A key was found and the doors were opened. At the center of the state dining room, Maillard had created a fountain, supported by water nymphs of nougat and surrounded by marzipan beehives filled with marzipan bees, producing charlotte russe. Elsewhere, venison, pheasant, duck and wild turkey were displayed, while an enormous Japanese bowl contained ten gallons of champagne punch.

  Just back of the punch bowl, Seward and his diplomatic cronies Schleiden and Stoeckl stationed themselves and conspicuously made up for the abstinence of so many of the principal figures of the still essentially rural and pious republic. Then Dan Sickles approached; and Seward drew him to one side, to inquire of Wikoff.

  “He’s very uncomfortable. So he’s apt to say anything, just to get out of the Old Capitol.” Sickles twirled his moustaches. “He asked for my old cell. But he was refused.”

  “Have you seen Hickman?”

  Sickles grimaced. “Not very likely. He’s threatening to hold me—me—in contempt of Congress. Do you know John Watt?”

  Seward looked surprised. “The head groundsman?”

  Sickles nodded. “I’ve been talking to Major French about him. It seems that he’s been robbing the White House ever since the days of President Pierce. Years ago, French tried to get rid of him but Watt always covers his tracks. Now he’s working pretty close with Madam.”

  “I see.” Seward began to see a great many things all at once; and the vista was ominous indeed. “Major French has some sort of … evidence?”

  “Yes.” Sickles dipped his crystal cup straight into the punch bowl to the horror of Mrs. Gideon Welles—a New England virago, in Seward’s prejudiced view. “He has enough evidence to send John Watt to prison for larceny, both petty and grand.”

  “Well, I like them both, Dan. Particularly together. This is solid evidence?”

  “Solid, Governor.”

  “Now, then, is she …?” Seward looked across the room. Mrs. Lincoln was holding court to Sumner and Trumbull and the French princes.

  “No, she’s not involved. At least not in what Major French showed me. On the other hand, when she took Watt to New York with her, it is said he helped her raise money for herself from …”

  “That’s only ‘said,’ Dan.” Seward was peremptory. He had his own sources of information in New York. Mrs. Lincoln had more than once begged money from businessmen. She had also promised political favors to at least one known enemy of the Administration. In Seward’s privileged position as the unofficial chief censor of the United States, he had read a good deal of Mrs. Lincoln’s correspondence. But since Seward regarded information as the source of all political power, he was not about to discuss any of this with Sickles. “Do you think we can put Mr. Watt in jail?”

  “For a long time. And best of all, Governor, legally.” Sickles added with a grin.

  “I don
’t like your tone, Dan. I get the impression that you may possibly, in unpatriotic moments, suspect that due to the present danger to the Union, I sequester the innocent out of malice or even mad caprice.”

  “Governor, I’d never hint such a thing.”

  “Even so, I feel it, Dan. It’s in the air. Something unspoken. But then I am an uncommonly sensitive man, as you know. I writhe under the lash of criticism …”

  “… as do the editors you lock up for lashing you …”

  “… pro bono publico.” Seward was enjoying himself. He was also beginning to see a way out of the dilemma. “It was Mr. Watt who gave the Chevalier Wikoff the President’s message.”

  “Why?” Sickles began the cross-examination.

  “Because Mr. Watt was on a retainer from the Herald …”

  “That would be criminal.”

  “True. I shall modify the evidence. Out of friendship, he gave the Chevalier …”

  “He can’t give anyone the President’s property. That’s theft.”

  Seward nodded. “I haven’t done a cross-examination in years, as you can see. Well, then, Mr. Watt happened to see a copy of the message lying on a table, as who did not? Since he has a perfect memory, can visualize page after page of Holy Writ at a single glance, he memorized certain passages from the message and then, out of friendship to the Chevalier and mistaken devotion to the President, he recited the passages to Wikoff, who wrote them down and sent them to the Herald.”

  Sickles finished the punch in one long swallow. “I think, Governor, that I’ve restored you to your old brilliance as a trial lawyer, who is never surprised by what his client says.”

  “Yes,” said Seward, thoughtfully. “But Mr. Watt is not yet our client.”

  “He will be if he knows that Major French means to bring charges against him and that I can get those charges dropped if he confesses to having told Wikoff about the message.”

  “What is to stop Major French from charging him anyway?” asked Seward.

  “Mrs. Lincoln. The President. I don’t think that Major French is so zealous to see justice done as he is anxious to see Mr. Watt gone from this place.”